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tissrc? 



SIK WALTER RALEIGH. 



YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY 



OF 



ENGLAND 



BY 
CHARLOTTE M. YONGE, 

Author or "The Heir of Redclyffe,"' "Little Lucys 
Wonderful Globe," "Book of Golden Deeds, k * 
"Young Folks' History of Germany," , * * «* ft 
"Greece," " France;'- 3 — ""Rome," 
&G. 









CINCINNATI: 

HITCHCOCK AND WALDEN. 

NEW YORK: PHILLIPS AND HUNT. 

1879. 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



m% 



Copyrighted by 

D. LOTHKOP & CO., AND ESTKS & LaUBIAT, 

1879. 






CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE. 

1. — Julius Csesar. B.C. 55 . . . . 13 

2.— The Romans in Britain, a.d. 41—418 . . 18 »- ' <q| 

3.— The Angle Children, a.d. 597 . . 25 

4.— The Northmen, a.d. 858— 95S ... 32 

5.— The Danish Conquest, a.d. 958 1035 . . 40 

6.— The Norman Conquest, a.d. 1035—1066 . 47 

7.— William the Conqueror, a.d. 1006—1087 . . 53 

8.— William II., Rufus. a.d. 10S7— 1100 . . 61 

9.— Henry I., Beau-Clerc. a.d. 1100—1135 . , 08 

10.— Stephen, a.d. 1135—1154 ... 72 

11.— Henry II., Fitz-Empress. a.d. 1154—1189 . . 78 

12.— Richard I., Lion-Heart, a.d. 1189—1199 . 87 

13.— John, Lackland, a.d. 1199—1216 . . .95 

14.— Henry III., of Winchester, a.d. 1216— 1272 . 104 

15.— Edward 1., Longshanks. a.d. 1272—1307 . . H3 

16.— Edward II., of Caernarvon, a.d. 1307—1327 . 122 

5 



VI. 



Contents. 



CHAP. 

17.— Edward III. a.d. 1327—1377 . 

18.— Kichard IT. a.d. 1377—1399 

19.— Henry IV. a.d. 1399—1413 . 

20.— Henry V., of Monmouth, a.d. 1413— 1423 

21.— Henry VI., of Windsor, a.d. 1423—1461 . 

22.— Edward IV. a.d. 1461—1483 

23.— Edward V. a.d. 1483 . 

24— Richard III. a.d. 1483—1485 . 

2o^Henry VII. a.d. 1485—1509 . 

26.— Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey. a.d. 1509—1529 

27.— Henry VIII. and his Wives, a.d. 1528—1547 

28.— Edward VI. a.d. 1547—1553 

29.— Mary I. a.d. 1553—1558 

30.— Elizabeth, a.d. 1558—1587 

31.— Elizabeth (continued), a.d. 15S7— 1602 

32.— James I., a.d. 1602—1625 

33.— Charles I., a.d. 1625—1649 . 

34.— The Long Parliament, a.d. 1649 

35.— Death of Charles I. a.d. 1649—1651 

36.— Oliver Cromwell, a.d. 1649—1660 

37.— Charles II. a.d. 1660— 16S5 . 

3S.— James II. a.d. 16S5— 168S 

39.— William III. and Mary II. a.d. 10S9— 1702 . 

40.— Anne. a.d. 1702—1714 

41. — George I. a.d. 1714 — 1725 

42.— George II. a.d. 1725—1700 

43.— George III. a.d. 1760—1735 . 



PAGE. 

130 
139 

14S 
157 
164 
174 
183 
190 
196 
205 
213 
222 
229 
237 
246 
253 
262 
269 
277 
28S 
297 
305 
314 
322 
332 
337 
340 



Contents, viL 

CHAP. PAGE. 

44.— George III. (continued.) a.d. 1'7S5— 1S10 . 354 

45.— George III.— The Regency, a.d. 1S10— 1820 . 362 

40.— George IY. a.d. 1820— 1S.;9 . . . 3G9 

47.— William IV. a.d. 1S30— 1S37 . . .375 

4S.— Victoria, a.d. 1837—1855 . . . 3S0 

49.— Victoria ,' continued). 1855— 1860 . . . - 3S0 

50.— Victoria (continued), a.d. 1860—1872 . . 393 

Questions for Examination . . 398 



i 

i 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Frontispiece. Sir Walter Raleigh. 

Cfesar landing in Britain ...... 13 

Caractacns and his Wife before Claudius . . . .19 

Augustine preaching to Ethelbert 27 

Alfred and his Mother 32 

Alfred in the Herdsman's Hut ...... 35 

Canute by the Sea-shore 45 

William the Conqueror reviewing his Troops . . 49 

Robert's Encounter with his Father 57 

The Crusaders' March Gl 

Death of Win. Rufus 63 

Escape of the Empress Maude 72 

Murder of Thomas a Becket 79 

Henry II. 's Tomb at Fontevraud 8G 

Richard removing the Archduke's Banner . . .89 

Murder of Prince Arthur ....... 97 

John's Anger after signing Magna Charta . . . 101 

Hubert de Burgh taking Refuge in a Church . . . 104 
ix. \ 



X. 



List of Illustrations. 



King Henry and his Barons .... 

Caernarvon Castle ....... 

Edward II. and his Jailers 

Death of Edward III. ...... 

Queen Philippa on her Knees before the King . 
The Black Prince serving the French King 

Death of Wat Tyler 

Prince Henry offers his Life to his Father . 
Henry Y.'s Eeview before Agincourt 
Joan of Arc recognizes the French King 
Interview between Edward IV. and Louis XL 

Tow r er of London 

Henry Tudor crowned on the Battle-field of Boswortl 
Henry VII. laying the Banners on the Altar 
Chapel and Tomb of Henry VII. . 
Henry VIII. starting for the Hunt 
Cardinal Wolsey served by Noblemen 
Marriage of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn 
ParLing of Sir Thomas More and his Daughter 
Edward VI. writing his Journal .... 

The New Service 

Mary vows to marry Philip II. .... 
Queen Elizabeth's Progress ..... 
Mary Queen of Scots ...... 



The Gunpowder Plot discovered 
Assassination of Buckingham . 



PAGE. 

. loi- 



ns - 

. 127 

100 
. 133 / 
. 135 - 

141 
. 153 

159 
. 1G5 - 

177 
. 185 

11)3 
. 19G 

199- 
. 205 

209 
. 213 

215 
. 225 

229 
. 231 

237 
. 241 

240 
. 257 

2G7 



List of Illustrations. xL 

TAGE. 

Queen Henrietta Maria ....... 271 *» 

Burial of King Charles ....... 277 

King Charles' Children . 279 >> 

Execution of King Charles 2S3 ^ 

Cromwell dismissing the Long Parliament . . . 289^, 

Portrait of Monk . . . 293 \ 

The Great Fire .207 

Lord Russell's Trial . . . . . . . . 301 ^ 

King James' Escape ....... 305 

Portrait of Monmouth ....... 307--- 

.King James at the Battle of Boyne .... 317 

Queen Anne 323 

Duke and Duchess of Marlborough 327 >. 

Charles Edward welcomed by the Highlanders . . . 337 
Death of Wolfe ........ 341 

Destruction of Tea . . . . . . . .346 

Franklin . 349 

Portrait of Pitt 355 x 

Plymouth Harbor ........ 365 \ 

Victoria .......... 380 

Windsor Castle . ........ S89 - 

English Manor House . 393 




YOUNG FOLKS' HISTOEY OF ENGLAND, 



CHAPTER I 



JULIUS CAESAR. 
B.C. 55. 



NEARLY two thousand years ago there was 
a brave captain whose name was Julius 
Csesar. The soldiers he led to battle were very 
strong, and conquered the people wherever they 



13 



14 Young Folks' History of England. 

went. They had no guns or gunpowder then ; 
but they had swords and spears, and, to prevent 
themselves from being hurt, they had helmets or 
brazen caps on their heads, with long tufts of 
horse-hair upon them, by way of ornament, and 
breast-plates of brass on their breasts, and on their 
arms they carried a sort of screen, made of strong 
leather. One of them carried a little brass figure 
of an eagle on a long pole, with a scarlet flag fly- 
ing below, and Avherever the eagle was seen, they 
all followed, and fought so bravely that nothing 
could loii^ stand against them. 

When Julius Caesar rode at their head, with his 
keen, pale hook-nosed face, and the scarlet cloak 
that the general always wore, they were so proud 
of him, and so fond of him, that there was nothing 
they would not do for him. 

Julius Caesar heard that a little way off there 
was a country nobody knew anything about, ex- 
cept that the people were very fierce and savage, 
and that a sort of pearl was found in the shells of 
mussels which lived in the rivers. He could not 
bear that there should be any place that his own 
people, the Romans, did not know and subdue. 
So he commanded the ships to be prepared, and he 
and his soldiers embarked, watching the white 



Julius Ccesar. 15 

cliffs on the other side of the sea grow higher and 
higher as he came nearer and nearer. 

When he came quite up to them, he found the 
savages 'were there in earnest. They were tall 
men, with long red streaming hair, and such 
clothes as they had were woollen, checked like 
plaid ; but many had their arms and breasts naked, 
and painted all over in blue patterns. They had 
spears and darts, and the chief men among them 
were in basket-work chariots, with a scythe in the 
middle of each wheel to cut down their enemies. 
They yelled and brandished their darts, to make 
Julius Caesar and his Roman soldiers keep away ; 
but he onfy went on to a place where the shore 
was not quite so steep, and there commanded his 
soldiers to land. The savages had run along the 
shore too, and there was a terrible fight ; but at 
last the man who carried the eagle jumped down 
into the middle of the natives, calling out to his 
fellows that they must come after him, or they 
would lose their eagle. They all came rushing and 
leaping down, and thus they managed to force 
back the savages, and make their way to the 
shore. 

There was not much worth having when they 
had made their way there. Though they came again 



16 Young Folks' History of England, 

the next year, and forced their way a good deal 
farther into the country, they saw chiefly bare 
downs, or heaths, or thick woods. The few houses 
were little more than piles of stones, and the peo- 
ple were rough and wild, and could do very little. 
The men hunted wild boars, and wolves and stags, 
and the women dug the ground, and raised a little 
corn, which they ground to flour between two 
stones to make bread ; and they spun the wool of 
their sheep, dyed it with bright colors, and wove it 
into dresses. They had some strong places in the 
woods, with trunks of trees, cut down to shut 
them in from the enem} r , with all their flocks and 
cattle ; but Caesar did not get into any of these. 
He only made the natives give him some of their 
pearls, and call the Romans their masters, and then 
he went back to his ships, and none of the set of 
savages who were alive when he came saw him or 
his Romans any more. 

Do you know who these savages were who 
fought with Julius Cassar ? They were called 
Britons. And the country he came to see ? That 
was our very own island, England, only it was not 
called so then. And the place where Julius Caesar 
landed is called Deal, and, if you look at the map, 
where England and Franco most nearly touch one 



Julius Ccesar, 17 

another, I think you will see the name Deal, and 
remember it was there Julius Caesar landed, and 
fought with the Britons. 

It was fifty-five years before our blessed Saviour 
was born that the Romans came. So at the top of 
this chapter stands B. c. (Before Christ) 55. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE ROMANS IK BKITAIN". 
A. i). 41—418. 

TT was nearly a hundred years before any more of 
■*■ the Romans came to Britain ; but they were 
people who could not hear of a place without want- 
ing to conquer it, and they never left off trying 
till they had done what they undertook. 

One of their emperors, named Claudius, sent his 
soldiers to conquer the island, and then came to 
see it himself, and called himself Britannicus in. 
honor of the victory, just as if he had done it him- 
self, instead of his generals. One British chief, 
whose name was Caractacus, who had fought very 
bravely against the Romans, was brought to Rome, 
with chains on his hands and feet, and set before 
the emperor. As he stood there, he said that, 
when he looked at all the grand buildings of stone 

IS 



The Romans in Britain. 21 

and marble in the streets, he could not think why 
the Romans should want to take away the poor 
rough-stone huts of the Britons. The wife of Carac- 
tacus, who had also been brought a prisoner to 
Rome, fell upon her knees imploring pity, but the 
conquered chief asked for nothing and exhibited 
no signs of fear. Claudius was kind to Carac- 
tacus ; but the Romans went on conquering Britain 
till they had won all the part of it that lies south of 
the river Tweed; and, as the people beyond that 
point were more fierce and savage still, a very 
strong wall, with a bank of earth and deep ditch 
was made to keep them out, and always watched by 
Roman soldiers. 

The Romans made beautiful straight roads all 
over the country, and they built towns. Almost 
all the towns whose names end in chester were 
begun by the Romans, and bits of their walls are 
to be seen still, built of very small bricks. Some- 
times people dig up a bit of the beautiful pavement 
of colored tiles, in patterns, which used to be the 
floors of their houses, or a piece of their money, or 
one of their ornaments. 

For the Romans held Britain for four hundred 
years, and tamed the wild people in the South, and 
taught them to speak and dress, and read and 



22 Young Folks History cf England, 

write like themselves, so that they could hardly be 
known from Romans. Only the wild ones beyond 
the wall, and in the mountains, were as savage as 
ever, and, now and then, used to come and steal 
the cattle, and burn the houses of their neigh- 
bors who had learnt better. 

Another set of wild people used to come over in 
boats across the North Sea and German Ocean. 
These people had their home in the country that is 
called Holstein and Jutland. They were tall men, 
and had blue eyes and fair hair, and they were very 
strong, and good-natured in a rough sort of way, 
though they were fierce to their enemies. There 
was a great deal more fighting than any one has 
told us about ; but the end of it all was that the 
Roman soldiers were wanted at home, and though 
the great British chief we call King Arthur fought 
very bravely, he could not drive back the blue- 
eyed men in the ships ; but more and more came, 
till, at last, they got all the country, and drove the 
Britons, some up into the North, some into the 
mountains that rise along the West of the island, 
and some out into its west point 

The Britons used to call the blue-eyed men 
Saxons; but they called themselves Angles, and 
the country was called after them Angle-land. 



The Romans in Britain. 28 

Don't you know what it is called now ? England 
itself, and the people English. They spoke much 
the same language as we do, only more as untaught 
country people, and they had not so many words, 
because they had not so many tilings to see and 
talk about. 

As to the Britons, the English went on driving 
thenl back till they only kept their mountains. 
There they have gone on living ever since, and 
talking their own old language. The English 
called them Welsh, a name that meant strangers, 
and we call them Welsh still, and their country 
Wales. They made a great many grand stories 
about their last brave chief, Arthur, till, at last, 
they turned into a sort of fairy tale. It was said 
that, when King Arthur lay badly wounded after 
his last battle, he bade his friend fling his sword 
into the river, and that then three lovely ladies 
came in a boat, and carried him away to a secret 
island. The Welsh kept on saying, for years 
and years, that one day King Arthur would 
wake up again, and give them back all Britain, 
which used to be their own before the English 
got it for themselves : but the English have had 
England now for thirteen hundred years, and we 



24 Young Folks' History of England. 

cannot doubt they will keep it as long as the 
world lasts. 

It was about 400 years after our Lord was born 
that the Romans were going and the English 
coming. 




CHAPTER III. 

THE ANGLE CHILDREN. 

a.d. 597. 

THE old English who had come to Britain 
were heathen, and believed in many false 
gods : the Sun, to whom they made Sunday sacred, 
as Monday was to the Moon, Wednesday to a great, 
terrible god, named Woden, and Thursday to a 
god named Thor, or Thunder. They thought a 
clap of thunder was the sound of the great ham- 
mer he carried in his hand. They thought their 
gods cared for people being brave, and that the 
souls of those who died fighting gallantly in battle 
were the happiest of all ; but they did not care 
for kindness or gentleness. 

Thus they often did very cruel things, and one 
of the worst that they did was the stealing of men, 
women, and children from their homes, and selling 



26 Young Folks" History of England. 

them to strangers, who made slaves of them. All 
England had not one king. There were generally 
about seven kings, each with a different part of. the 
island ; and as they were often at war with one an- 
other, they used to steal one another's subjects, 
and sell them to merchants who came from Italy 
and Greece for them. 

Seme English children were made slaves, and 
carried to Rome, where they were set in the market- 
place to be sold. A good priest, named Gregory, 
was walking by. He saw their fair faces, blue 
eyes, and long light hair, and, stopping, he asked 
who they were. "Angles," he was told, "from 
the isle of Britain." "Angles ? " he said, " they 
have angel faces, and they ought to be heirs with 
the angels in heaven." From that time this good 
man tried to find means to send teachers to teach 
the English the Christian faith. He had to wait 
for many years, and, in that time, he was made 
Pope, namely, Father-Bishop of Rome. At last he 
heard that one of the chief English kings, Ethelbert 
of Kent, had married Bertha, the daughter of the 
King of Paris, who was a Christian, and that she 
was to be allowed to bring a priest with her, and 
have a church to worship in. 

Gregory thought this would make a beginning : 



The Angle Children. 29 

so he sent a priest, whose name was Augustine, 
with a letter to King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha, 
and asked the King to listen to him. Ethelbert 
met Augustine in the open air, under a tree at Can- 
terbury, and heard him tell about the true God, 
and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent ; and, after 
some time, and a great deal of teaching, Ethelbert 
gave up worshiping Woden and Thor, and be- 
lieved in the true God, and was baptized, and 
many of his people with him. Then Augustine 
was made Archbishop of Canterbury ; and, one 
after another, in the course of the next hundred 
years, all the English kingdoms learnt to know 
God, and broke down their idols, and became 
Christian. 

Bishops were appointed, and churches were built, 
and parishes were marked off — a great many of them 
the very same that we have now. Here and there, 
when men and women wanted to be very good in- 
deed, and to give their whole lives to doing nothing 
but serving God, without any of the fighting and 
feasting, the buying and selling of the outer world, 
they built houses, where they might live apart, 
and churches, where there might be services seven 
times a day. These houses were named abbeys. 
Those for men were, sometimes, also called monas- 



30 Young Folks' History of England. 

teries, and the men in them were termed monks, 
while the women were called nnns, and their 
homes convents or nunneries. They had plain 
dark dresses, and hoods, and the women always 
had veils. The monks used to promise that they 
would work as well as pray, so they used to build 
their abbeys by some forest or marsh, and bring it 
all into order, turning the wild place into fields, 
full of wheat. Others used to copy out the Holy 
Scriptures and other good books upon parchment 
— because there was no paper in those days, nor 
any printing — drawing beautiful painted pictures 
at the beginning of the chapters, which were called 
illuminations. The nuns did needlework and em- 
broidery, as hangings for the altar, and garments 
for the priests, all bright with beautiful colors, and 
stiff with gold. The English nuns' work was the 
most beautiful to be seen anywhere. 

There were schools in the abbeys, where boys 
were taught reading, writing, singing, and Latin, 
to prepare them for being clergymen ; but not 
many others thought it needful to have anything 
to do with books. Even the great men thought 
they could farm and feast, advise the king, and 
consent to the laws, hunt or fight, quite as well 
without reading, and they did not care for much 



The Angle Children. 31 

besides ; for, though they were Christians, they 
were still rude, rough, ignorant men, who liked 
nothing so well as a hunt or a feast, and slept 
away all the evening, especially when they could 
get a harper to sing to them. 

The English men used to wear a long dress like 
a carter's frock, and their legs were wound round 
with strips of cloth by way of stockings. Their 
houses were only one story, and had no chim- 
neys — only a hole at the top for the smoke to go 
out at ; and no glass in the windows. The only 
glass there was at all had been brought from Italy 
to put into York Cathedral, and it was thought a 
great wonder. So the windows had shutters to 
keep out the rain and wind, and the fire was in the 
middle of the room. At dinner-time, about twelve 
o'clock, the lord and lady of the house sat upon 
cross-legged stools, and their children and ser- 
vants sat on benches; and square bits of wood 
called trenchers, were put before them for plates, 
while the servants carried round the meat on spits, 
and everybody cut off a piece with his own knife 
and ate it without a fork. They drank out of 
cows' horns, if they had not silver cups. But 
though they were so rough they were often good, 
brave people. 




CHAPTER IV 



THE NORTHMEN. 



a.d. 858—958. 



THERE were many more of the light-haired, 
blue-eyed people on the further side of the 
North Sea who worshiped Thor and Woden still, 
and thought that their kindred in England had 
fallen from the old ways. Besides, they liked to 

make their fortunes by getting what they could 
32 



The Northmen. 33 

from their neighbors. Nobody was thought brave 
or worthy, in Norway or Denmark, who had not 
made some voyages in a " long keel," as a ship 
was called, and fought bravely, and brought home 
gold cups and chains or jewels to show where he 
had been. Their captains were called Sea Kings, 
and some of them went a great way, even into the 
Mediterranean Sea, and robbed the beautiful 
shores of Italy. So dreadful was it to see the fleet 
of long ships coming up to the shore, with a ser- 
pent for the figure-head, and a raven as the flag, 
and crowds of fierce warriors with axes in their 
hands longing for prey and bloodshed, that where 
we pray in church that God would deliver us from 
lightning and tempest, and battle and murder, our 
forefathers used to add, "From the fury of the 
Northmen, good Lord deliver us." 

To England these Northmen came in great 
swarms, and chiefly from Denmark, so that 
they were generally called " the Danes." They 
burnt the houses, drove off the cows and sheep, 
killed the men, and took away the women and 
children to be slaves ; and they were always most 
cruel of all where they found an Abbey with any 
monks or nuns, because they hated the Christian 
faith. By this time those seven English kingdoms 



34 Young Folk* History of England, 

I told you of had all fallen into the hands of one 
king. Egbert, King of the West Saxons, who 
reigned at Winchester, is counted as the first king 
of all England. His four grandsons had dreadful 
battles with the Danes all their lives, and the 
three eldest all died quite young. The youngest 
was the greatest and best king England ever had — 
Alfred the Truth-teller. As a child Allied had 
excited the hopes and admiration of all who saw 
him, and while his brothers were bnsy with their 
sports, it was his delight to kneel at his mother's 
knee, and recite to her the Saxon ballads which his 
tutor had read to him, inspiring him, at that early 
age, with the ardent patriotism and the passionate 
love of literature which rendered his character 
so illustrious. He was only twenty-two years 
old when he Game to the throne, and the king- 
dom was overrun everywhere with the Danes. 
In the northern part some had even settled down, 
and made themselves at home, as the English had 
done four hundred years before, and more and 
more kept coming in their ships : so that, though 
Alfred beat them in battle again and again, there was 
no such thing as driving them away. At last he had 
so very few faithful men left with him, that he 
thought it wise to send them away, and hide him- 



a 



The Northmen. 37 

self in the Somersetshire marsh country. There is 
a pretty story told of him that he was hidden in 
the hut of a poor herdsman, whose wife, thinking 
he was a poor wandering soldier as he sat by the 
fire mending his bow and arrows, desired him to 
turn the cakes she had set to bake upon the hearth. 
Presently she found them burning, and cried out 
angrily, " Lazy rogue ! you can't turn the cakes, 
though you can eat them fast enough." 

However, that same spring, the brave English 
gained more victories ; Alfred came out of his 
hiding place and gathered them all together, and 
beat the Danes, so that they asked for peace. He 
said he would allow those who had settled in the 
North of England to stay there, provided they 
would become Christians ; and he stood godfather 
to their chief, and gave him the name of Ethelstane. 
After this, Alfred had stout English ships built to 
meet the Danes at sea before they could come and 
land in England; and thus he kept them off, so 
that for all the rest of his reign, and that of his 
son. and grandsons, they could do very little mis- 
chief, and for a time left off coming at all, but went 
to rob other countries that were not so well guard- 
ed by brave kings. 

But Alfred was not only a brave warrior. He 



38 Young Folks" History of England. 

was a most good and holy man, who feared God 
above all things, and tried to do his very best for 
his people. He made good laws for them, and 
took care that every one should be justly treated, 
and that nobody should do his neighbor wrong 
without being punished. -So many Abbeys had 
been burnt and the monks killed by the Danes, 
that there were hardly any books to be had, or 
scholars to read them. He invited learned men 
from abroad, and wrote and translated books him- 
self for them ; and he had a school in his house, 
where he made the young nobles learn with his 
own sons. He built up the churches, and gave 
alms to the poor ; and he was always ready to hear 
the troubles of any poor man. Though he was 
always working so hard, he had a disease that used 
to cause him terrible pain almost every day. His 
last years were less peaceful than the middle ones 
of his reign, for the Danes tried to come again ; 
but he beat them off by his ships at sea, and when 
he died at fifty-two years old, in the year 901, he 
left England at rest and quiet, and we always 
think of him as one of the greatest and best kings 
who ever reigned in England, or in any other coun- 
try. As long as his children after him and his 
people went on in the good way he had taught 



The Northmen. 39 

them, all prospered with them, and no enemies 
hurt them ; and this was all through the reigns of 
his son, his grandson, and great-grandsons. Their 
council of great men was called by a long word 
that is in our English, "Wise Men's Meeting," 
and there they settled the affairs of the kingdom. 
The king's wife was not called queen, but lady ; 
and what do you think lady means? It means 
"loaf-giver'* — giver of bread to her household 
and the poor. So a lady's great work is to be 
charitable. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE DANISH CONQUEST, 
A.D. 958—1035. 

THE last very prosperous king was Alfred's 
great-grandson, Edgar, who was owned as 
their over-lord by all the kings of the remains 
of the Britons in Wales and Scotland. Once 
eight of these kings came to meet him at 
Chester, and rowed him in his barge along the 
river Dee. It was the grandest day a king of 
England enjoyed for many years. Edgar was 
called the peaceable, because there were no attacks 
by the Danes at all throughout his reign. In fact, 
the Northmen and Danes had been fighting among 
themselves at home, and these fights generally 
ended in some one going off as a Sea-King, with all 
his friends, and trying to gain a new home in some 
fresh country. One great party of Northmen, un- 
40 



The Danish Conquest. 41 

cler a very tall and mighty chief named Rollo, had, 
.some time before, thus gone to- France, and forced 
the king to give them a great piece of his country, 
just opposite to England, which was called after 
them Normandy. There they learned to talk 
French, and grew like Frenchmen, though they 
remained a great deal braver, and more spirited 
than any of their neighbors. 

There were continually fleets of Danish ships 
coming to England ; and the son of Edgar, whose 
name was Ethelred, was a helpless, cowardly sort 
of man, so slow and tardy, that his people called 
him Ethelred the Unready. Instead of fitting out 
ships to fight against the Danes, he took the money 
the ships ought to have cost to pay them to go 
away without plundering ; and as to those who 
had come into the country without his leave, he 
called them his guard, took them into his pay, and 
let them live in the houses of the English, where 
they were very rude, and gave themselves great 
airs, making the English feed them on all their 
best meat, and bread, and beer, and always call 
them Lord Danes. He made friends himself with 
the Northmen, or Normans, who had settled in 
France, and married Emma, the daughter of their 
duke ; but none of his plans prospered : things 



42 Young Folk* History of England. 

grew worse and worse, and his mind and his peo- 
ple's grew so bitter against the Danes, that at last 
it was agreed that, all over the South of England, 
every Englishman should rise up in one night and 
murder the Dane who lodged in his house. 

Among those Danes who were thus wickedly 
killed was the sister of the King of Denmark. Of 
course he was furious when he heard of it, and 
came over to England determined to punish the 
cruel, treacherous king and people, and take the 
whole island for his own. He did punish the peo- 
ple, killing, burning, and plundering wherever he 
went ; but ho could never get the king into his 
hands, for Ethelred went off in the height of the 
danger to Normandy, where he had before sent his 
wife Emma, and her children, leaving his eldest 
son (child of his first wife), Edmund Ironside, to 
fight for the kingdom as best he might. 

This King of Denmark died in the midst of his 
English war : but his son Cnut went on with the 
conquest he had begun, and before long Ethelred. 
the Unready died, and Edmund Ironside was mur- 
dered, and ('nut- became King of England, as well 
as of Denmark. He became a Christian, and mar- 
ried Eninia, Ethelred's widow, though she was 
much older than himself, lie had been a hard and 



The Danish Conquest. 43 

cruel map, but he now laid aside his evil ways, and 
became a noble and wise and just king, a lover of 
churches and good men ; and the English seem to 
have been as well off under him as if he had been 
one of their own kings. There is no king of 
whom more pleasant stories are told. One is of 
his wanting to go to church at Ely Abbey one cold 
Candlemas Day. Ely was on a hill in the middle 
of a great marsh. The marsh was frozen over ; 
but the king's servants told him that the ice was 
npt strong enough to bear, and they all stood look- 
ing at it. Then out stepped a stout countryman, 
who was so fat, that his nickname was The Pud- 
ding. "Are you all afraid ? " he said. " I will go 
over at once before the king." " Will you so," 
said the king, " then I will come after you, for 
whatever bears you will bear me." Cnut was a 
little, slight man, and he got easily over, and Pud- 
ding got a j)iece of land for his reward. 

These servants of the king used to natter him. 
They told him he was lord of land and sea, and 
that every thing would obey him. " Let us try," 
said Cnut, who wished to show them how foolish 
and profane they were ; " bring out my chair to 
the sea-side/' He was at Southampton at the 
lime, close to the sea, and the tide was coming: in. 



44 Young Folks* History of England. 

" Now sea," he said, as he sat down, " I am thy 
lord, dare not to come near, nor to wet my feet." 
Of course the waves rolled on, and splashed over 
him ; and he turned to his servants, and bade 
them never say words that took away from the 
honor due to the only Lord of heaven and earth. 
He never put on Jiis crown again after this, but 
hung it up in Winchester Cathedral. He was a 
thorough good king, and there was much grief 
when he died, stranger though he was. 

A great many Danes had made their homes in 
Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, ever since Alfred's 
time, and some of their customs are still left there, 
and some of their words. The worst of them 
was that they were great drunkards, and the En- 
glish learnt this bad custom of them. 




CANUTE BY THE SEA-SHORE. 



CHAPTER VL 

THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
a.d. 1035—1066. 

/^^NT'T left three sons; but one was content to 
^-^ be only King of Denmark, and the other two 
died very soon. So a great English nobleman, 
called Earl Godwin, set up as king, Edward, one 
of those sons of Ethelred the Unready who had 
been sent away to Normandy. He was a very 
kind, good, pious man, who loved to do good. He 
began the building of our grand church at West- 
minster Abbey, and he was so holy that he was 
called the Confessor, which is a word for good men 
not great enough to be called saints. He was too 
good-natured, as you will say when you hear that 
one day, when he was in bed, he saw a thief come 
cautiously into his room, open the chest where his 
treasure was, and take out the money-bags. In- 



48 Young Folks" History of England. 

stead of calling anyone, or seizing the man, the 
king only said, sleepily, " Take care, you rogue, or 
my chancellor will catch you and give you a good 
whipping." 

You can fancy that nobody much minded such 
a king as this, and so there were many disturbances 
in his time. Some of them rose out of the kincr — 

o 

who had been brought up in Normandy — liking 
the Normans better than the English. They really 
were much cleA r erer and more sensible, for they 
had learnt a great deal in France, while the En- 
glish had forgotten much of what Alfred and his 
sons had taught them, and all through the long, sad 
reign of Ethelred had been getting more dull, and 
clumsy and rude. Moreover, they had learnt of 
the Danes to be sad drunkards ; but both they and 
the Danes thought the Norman French fine gentle- 
men, and could not bear the sight of them. 

Think, then, how angry they all were when it 
began to be said that King Edward wanted to 
leave his kingdom of England to his mother's Nor- 
man nephew, Duke William, because all his own 
near relations were still little boys, not likely to 
be grown up by the time the old king died. Many 
of the English wished for Harold, the son of Earl 
Godwin, a brave, spirited man ; but Edward sent 



The Norman Conquest. 51 

him to Normandy, and there Duke William made 
him swear an oath not to do anything to hinder 
the kingdom from being given to Duke William. 

Old King Edward died soon after, and Harold 
said at once that his promise had been forced and 
cheated from him, so that he need not keep it, and 
he was crowned King of England. This filled 
William with anger. He called all his fighting 
Normans together, fitted out ships, and sailed 
across the English Channel to Dover. The figure- 
head of his own ship was a likeness of his second 
little boy, named William. He landed at Peven- 
sey, in Sussex, and set up his camp while Harold 
was away in the North, fighting with a runaway 
brother of his own, who had brought the Nor- 
wegians to attack Yorkshire. Harold had just won 
a great battle over these enemies when he heard 
that William and his Normans had landed, and he 
had to hurry the whole length of England to meet 
them. 

Many of the English would not join him, be- 
cause they did not want him for their king. But 
though his army was not large, it was very brave. 
When he reached Sussex, he placed all his men on 
the top of a low hill, near Hastings, aud caused 
them to make a fence all round, with a. ditch before 

4 



52 Young Folks' History of England. 

it, and in the middle was his own standard, with a 
fighting man embroidered upon it. Then the Nor- 
mans rode up on their war-horses to attack him, 
one brave knight going first, singing. The war- 
horses stumbled in the ditch, and the long spears 
of the English killed both men and horses. Then 
William ordered his archers to shoot their arrows 
high in the air. They came down like hail into 
the faces and on the heads of the English. Harold 
himself was pierced by one in the eye. The Nor- 
mans charged the fence again, and broke through ; 
and, by the time night came on, Harold himself 
and all his brave Englishmen were dead. They 
did not flee away ; they all staid, and were killed, 
fighting to the last ; and only then was Harold's 
standard of the fighting man rooted up, and Wil- 
liam's standard — a cross, which had been blessed 
by the Pope — planted instead of it. So ended 
the battle of Hastings, in the year 1066. 

The land has had a great many " conquests " 
hitherto — the Roman conquest, the English con- 
quest, the Danish conquest, and now the Norman 
conquest. But there have been no more since ; 
and the kings and queens have gone on in one long 
line ever since, from William of Normandy down 
to Queen Victoria, 



CHAPTER VII. 

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 

a.d. 106G— 1087. 

r I ^HE king who had conquered England was a 
-1~ brave, strong man, who had been used to 
fighting and struggling ever since he was a young 
child, 

He really feared God, and was in many ways a 
good man ; but it had not been right of him to 
come and take another people's country by force ; 
and the having done one wrong thing often makes 
people grow worse and worse. Many of the En- 
glish were unwilling to have William as their king, 
and his Norman friends were angry that he would 
not let them have more of the English lands, nor 
break the English laws. So they were often rising 
up against him ; and each time he had to put them 
53 



54 Young Folks' History of England. 

clown he grew more harsh and stern. He did not 
want to be cruel ; but he did many cruel things, 
because it was the only way to keep England. 

When the people of Northumberland rose against 
him, and tried to get back the old set of kings, he 
had the whole country wasted with fire and sword, 
till hardly a town or village was left standing. 
He did this to punish the Northumbrians, and 
frighten the rest. But he did another thing that 
was worse, because it was only for his own amuse- 
ment. In Hampshire, near his castle of Win- 
chester, there was a great space of heathy ground, 
and holly copse and beeches and oaks above it, 
with deer and boars running wild in the glades — 
a beautiful place for hunting, only that there were 
so many villages in it that the creatures were dis- 
turbed and killed. William liked hunting more 
than anything else — his people said he loved the 
high deer as if he was their father, — and to keep 
the place clear for them, he turned out all the in- 
habitants, and pulled down their houses, and made 
laws against any one killing his game. The place 
he thus cleared is still called the New Forest, 
though it is a thousand years old. 

An old Norman law that the English grumbled 
about very much was, that as soon as a bell was 



William the Conqueror. 55 

rung., at eight o'clock every evening, everyone was 
to put out candle and fire, and go to bed. The 
bell was called the curfew, and many old churches 
ring it still. 

William caused a great list to be made of all the 
lands in the country, and who held them. We 
have this list still, and it is called Domesday Book. 
It shews that a great deal had been taken from the 
English and given to the Normans. The king 
built castles, with immensely thick, strong walls, 
and loop-hole windows, whence to shoot arrows ; 
and here he placed his Normans to keep the En- 
glish down. But the Normans were even more 
unruly than the English, and only his strong hand 
kept them in order. They fode about in armor — ■ 
helmets on their heads, a shirt of mail, made of 
chains of iron linked together, over their bodies, 
gloves and boots of iron, swords by their sides, 
and lances in their hands — and thus they could 
bear down all before them. They called them- 
selves knights, and were always made to take an 
oath to befriend the weak, and poor, and helpless ; 
but they did not often keep it towards the poor 
English. 

William had four sons — Robert, who was called 
Court-hose or Short-legs ; William, called Rufus, 



56 Young Folks' History of England. 

because he had reel hair ; Henry, called Beau-clerc, 
or the fine scholar: and Richard, who was still a 
lad when he was killed by a stag in the New 
Forest. 

Robert, the eldest, was a wild, rude, thoughtless 
youth ; but he fancied himself fit to govern Nor- 
mandy, and asked his father to give it up to him. 
King William answered, " I never take my clothes 
off before I go to bed," meaning that Robert must 
wait for his death. Robert could not bear to be 
laughed at, and was very angry. Soon after, when 
he was in the castle court, his two brothers, Wil- 
liam and Henry, grew riotous, and poured water 
down from the upper windows on him and his 
friends. He rlew into* a passion, dashed up-stairs 
with his sword in his hand, and might have killed 
his brothers if their father had not come in to pro- 
tect them. Then he threw himself on his horse 
and galloped away, persuaded some friends to join 
him, and actually fought a battle with his own 
father, in which the old king was thrown off his 
horse, and hurt in the hand ; but we must do the 
prince the justice to say that when he recognized 
his father in the knight whom he had unseated, he 
was filled with grief and horror, and eagerly be- 




ROBERT'S ENCOUNTER WITH HIS FATHER. 



William the „ Conqueror, 59 

sought his pardon, and tenderly raised him from 
the ground. Then Robert wandered about, liv- 
ing on money that his mother, Queen Matilda, 
sent him, though his father was angry with her 
for doing so, and this made the first quarrel the 
husband and wife had ever had. 

Not lono- after, William went to war with the 
King of France. He had caused a city to be burnt 
down, and was riding through the ruins, when his 
horse trod on some hot ashes, and began to plunge. 
The king was thrown forward on the saddle, and, 
being a very heavy, stout man, was so much hurt, 
that, after a few weeks, in the year 1087, he died 
at a little monastery, a short way from Rouen, the 
chief city of his dukedom of Normandy. 

He was the greatest man of his time, and he had 
much good in him ; and when he lay on his death- 
bed he grieved much for all the evil he had brought 
upon the English; but that could not undo it. He 
had been a great church-builder, and so were his 
Norman bishops and barons. You may always 
know their work, because it has round pillars, and 
round arches, with broad borders of zig-zags, and 
all manner of patterns round them. 

In the end, the coming of the Normans did the 



60 



Young Folks' History of England. 



English much good, by brightening them up and 
making them less dull and heavy ; but they did 
not like having a king and court who talked 
French, and cared more for Normandy than for 
England. 





CHAPTER VIII. 



WILLIAM II., KUFUS. 



a.d. 1087—1100. 

WILLIAM the Conqueror was obliged to let 
Normandy fall to Robert, his eldest son ; 
but he thought he could do as he pleased about 
England, which he had won for himself. He had 
sent off his second son, William, to England, with 
his ring to Westminister, giving him a message 



62 Young Folks' History of England. 

that he hoped the English people would have him 
for their king. And they did take him, though 
they would hardly have done so if they had known 
what lie would be like when he was left to himself. 
But while he was kept under by his father, they 
only knew that he had red hair and a ruddy face, 
and had more sense than his brother Robert. He 
is sometimes called the Red King, but more com- 
monly William Rufus. Things went worse than 
ever with the poor English in his time ; for at least 
William the Conqueror had made everybody mind 
the law, but now Villiam Rufus let his cruel sol- 
diers do just as they pleased, and spoil what they 
did not want. It was of no use to complain, for 
the king would only laugh and make jokes. He 
did not care for God or man ; only for being pow- 
erful, for feasting, and for hunting. 

Just at this time there was a great stir in Europe. 
Jerusalem — that holy city, where our blessed 
Lord had taught, where he had been crucified, and 
where he had risen from the dead — was a place 
where everyone wished to go and worship, and this 
they called going on pilgrimage. A beautiful 
church had once been built over the sepulchre 
where our Lord had lain, and enriched with gifts. 
But for a lung time past Jerusalem had been in 



William IL, Rufus. 63 

the hands of an Eastern people, who think their 
false prophet, Mahommed, greater than our blessed 
Lord. These Mahommedans used to rob and ill- 
treat the pilgrims, and make them pay great sums 
of money for leave to come into Jerusalem. At 
last a pilgrim, named Peter the Hermit, came 
home, and got leave from the Pope to try to waken 
up all the Christian princes and knights to go to 
the Holy Land, and fight to get the Holy Sepul- 
chre back into Christian hands again. He used to 
preach in the open air, and the people who heard 
hi'm were so stirred up that they all shouted out, 
" It is God's will ! It is God's will ! " And each 
who undertook to go and fio-ht in the East received 
a cross cut out in cloth, red or white, to wear on 
his shoulder. Many thousands promised to go on 
this crusade, as they called it, and among them 
was Robert, Duke of Normandy. But he had 
wasted his money, so that he could not fit out an 
army to take with him. So he offered to give up 
Normandy to his brother William while he was 
gone, if William would let him have the money he 
wanted. The Red King was very ready to make 
such a bargain, and he laughed at the Crusaders, 
and thought that they were wasting their time and 
trouble. 



64 Young Folks' History of England. 

They had a very good man to lead them, named 
Godfrey de Bouillon ; and, after many toils and 
troubles, they did gain Jerusalem, and could kneel, 
weeping, at the Holy Sepulchre. It was proposed 
to make Robert King of Jerusalem, but he would 
not accept the offer, and Godfrey was made king 
instead, and staid to guard the holy places, while 
Duke Robert set out on his return home. 

In the meantime, the Red King had gone on in 
as fierce and ungodly a way as ever, laughing good 
advice to scorn, and driving away the good Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, St. Anselm, and everyone 
else who tried to warn him or withstand his wick- 
edness. One day, in the year 1100, he went out 
to hunt deer in the New Forest, which his father 
had wasted, laughing and jesting in his rough way. 
By and by he was found dead under an oak tree, 
with an arrow through his heart ; and a wood- 
cutter took up his body in his cart, and carried it 
to Winchester Cathedral, where it was buried. 

Who shot the arrow nobody knew, and nobody 
ever will know. Some thought it must be a knight, 
named Walter Tyrrell, to whom the king had 
given three long good arrows that morning. He 
rode straight away to Southampton, and went off 
to the Holy Land ; so it is likely that he knew 




DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS. 



William II, Rufus. 67 

something about the king's death. But he never 
seems to have told anyone, whether it was only an 
accident, or a murder, or who did it. Anyway, it 
was a fearful end, for a bad man to die in his sin, 
without a moment to repent and pray. 






CHAPTER IX. 

HENRY I., BEAU-CLERC. 
a.d. 1100—1135. 

HENRY, the brother of William Rufus, was 
one of the hunting party ; and as soon as 
the cry spread through the forest that the king was 
dead, he rode of! at full speed to Winchester, and 
took possession of all his brother's treasure. Wil- 
liam Rufus had never been married, and left no 
children, and Henry was much the least violent 
and most sensible of the brothers ; and, as he 
promised to govern according to the old laws of 
England, he did not find it difficult to persuade 
the people to let him be crowned king. 

He was not really a good man, and he could be 
very cruel sometimes, as well as false and cunning ; 
but he kept good order, and would not allow such 
horrible things to be done as in his brother's time. 
So the English were better off than they had been, 

68 



Hairy I., Beau-clerc. 69 

and used to say the king would let no one break 
the laws but himself. They were pleased, too, that 
Henry married a lady who was half English — 
Maude, the daughter of Malcolm Greathead, King 
of Scotland, and of a lady of the old English royal 
line. They loved her greatly, and called her good 
Queen Maude. 

Robert came back to Normandy, and tried to 
make himself King of England ; but Henry soon 
drove him back. The brothers went on quarreling 
for some years, and Robert managed Normandy 
miserably, and wasted his money, so that he some- 
times had no clothes to wear, and lay in bed for 
want of them. 

Some of the Normans could not bear this any 
longer, and invited Henry to come and take the 
dukedom. He came with an army, many of whom 
were English, and fought a battle with Robert and 
his faithful Normans at Tenchebray, in Normandy. 
They gained a great victory, and the English 
thought it made up for Hastings. Poor Robert 
was made prisoner by his brother, who sent him off 
to Cardiff Castle, in Wales, where he lived for 
twenty-eight years, and then died, and was buried 
in Gloucester Cathedral, with his figure made in 
bog oak over his monument. 



70 Young Folks' History of England. 

Henry had two children — William and Maude. 
The girl was married to the Emperor of Germany 
and the boy was to be the husband of Alice, 
daughter to the Count of Anjou, a great French 
Prince, whose lands were near Normandy. It 
was the custom to marry children very young 
then, before they were old enough to leave their 
parents and make a home for themselves. So 
William w T as taken by his father to Anjou, and 
there married to the little girl, and then she was 
left behind, while he was to return to England 
with his father. Just as he was going to embark, 
a man came to the king, and begged to have the 
honor of taking him across in his new vessel, called 
the White Ship, saying that his father had steered 
William the Conqueror's ship. Henry could not 
change his own plans ; but, as the man begged so 
hard, he said his son, the young bridegroom, and 
his friends might go in the White Ship. They 
sailed in the evening, and there was a great merry- 
making on board, till the sailors grew so drunk 
that the}^ did not know now to guide the ship, and 
ran her against a rock. She filled with water and 
began to sink. A boat was lowered, and William 
safely placed in it ; but, just as he was rowed off 
he heard the cries of the ladies who were left be- 



Henry J., Beaurderc. 71 

hind, and caused the oarsmen to turn back for 
them. So many drowning wretches crowded into 
it, as soon as it came near, that it sank with their 
weight, and all were lost. Only the top-mast of 
the ship remained above water, and to "it clung a 
butcher and the owner of the ship all night long. 
When daylight came, and the owner knew that 
the king's son was really dead, and by his fault, he 
lost heart, let go the mast and was drowned. Only 
the butcher was taken off alive ; and for a long- 
time no one durst tell the king what had happened. 
At last a boy was sent to fall at his feet, and tell 
him his son was dead. He was a broken-hearted 
man, and never knew gladness again all the rest of 
his life. 

His daughter Maude had lost her German hus- 
band, and came home. He made her marry Geof- 
frey of Anjou, the brother of his son's wife, and 
called upon all his chief noblemen to swear that 
they would take her for their queen in England 
and their duchess in Normandy after his own 
death. 

He did not live much longer. His death was 
caused, in the year 1135, by eating too much of the 
fish called lamprey, and he was buried in Reading 
Abbey. 




CHAPTER X. 



STEPHEN. 



a.d. 1135—1154 



NEITHER English nor Normans had ever 
been ruled by a woman, and the Empress 
Maude, as she still called herself, was a proud, dis- 
agreeable, ill-tempered woman, whom nobody liked. 
So her cousin, Stephen de Blois — whose mother, 
72 



Stephen. 73 

Adela, had been daughter of William the Con- 
queror — thought to obtain the crown of England 
by promising to give everyone what they wished. 
It was very wrong of him ; for he, like all the 
other barons, had sworn that Maude should reign. 
But the people knew lie was a kindly, gracious 
sort of person, and greatly preferred him to her. 
So he was crowned ; and at once all the Norman 
barons, whom King Henry had kept down, began 
to think they could have their own way. They 
built strong castles, and hired men, with whom 
they made war upon each other, robbed one an- 
other's tenants, and, when they saw a peaceable 
traveler on his way, they would dash down upon 
him, drag him into the castle, take away all the 
jewels or money he had about him, or, if he had 
none, they would shut him up and torment him till 
he could get his friends to pay them a sum to let 
him loose. 

Stephen, who was a kind-hearted man himself, 
tried to stop these cruelties ; but then the barons 
turned round on him, told him he was not their 
proper king, and invited Maude to come and be 
crowned in his stead. She came very willingly; 
and her uncle, King David of Scotland, set out 
with an army to fight for her ; but all the English 



74 Young Folks' History of England. 

in the north came out to drive him back ; and 
they beat him and his Scots at what they call the 
Battle of the Standard, because the English had a 
holy standard, which was kept in Durham Cathe- 
dral. Soon after, Stephen was taken prisoner at a 
battle at Lincoln, and there was nothing to prevent 
Maude from being queen but her own bad temper. 
She went to Winchester, and was there proclaimed ; 
but she would not speak kindly or gently to the 
people ; and when her friends entreated her to re- 
ply more kindly, she flew into a passion, and it is 
even said that she gave a box on the ear to her 
uncle — the good King of Scotland, who had come 
to help her — for reproving her for her harsh an- 
swers. When Stephen's wife came to beg her to 
set him free, promising that he should go away 
beyond the seas, and never interfere with her 
again, she would not listen, and drove her away. 
But she soon found how foolish she had been. 
Stephen's friends would have been willing that lie 
should give up trying to be king, but they could 
not leave him in prison for life ; and so they went 
on fighting for him, while more and more of the 
English joined them, as they felt how bad and un- 
kind a queen they had in the Empress. Indeed, 
she was so proud and violent, that her husband 



Stephen, 75 

would not come over to England to help her, but 
staid to govern Normandy. She was soon in great 
distress, and had to flee from Winchester, riding 
through the midst of the enemy, and losing al- 
most all her friends by the way, as they were slain 
or made prisoners. Her best helper of all — Earl 
Robert of Gloucester — was taken while guarding 
her ; and she could only get to his town of Glouces- 
ter by lying down in a coffin, with holes for air, 
and being thus carried through all the country, 
where she had made everyone hate her. 

Stephen's wife offered to set the Earl free, if the 
other side would release her husband ; and this ex- 
change was brought about. Robert then went to 
Normandy, to fetcli Maude's little son Henry, who 
was ten years old, leaving her, as he thought, safe 
in Oxford Castle ; but no sooner was he gone than 
Stephen brought his army, and besieged the Castle 
— that is, he brought his men round it, tried to 
climb up the walls, or beat them down with heavy 
beams, and hindered any food from being brought 
in. Everything in the castle that could be eaten 
was gone ; but Maude was determined not to fall 
into her enemy's hands. It was the depth of win- 
ter ; the river below the walls was frozen over, and 
snow was on the ground. One dark night, Maude 



76 Young Folks History of England. 

dressed herself and three of her knights all in 
white, and they were, one by one, let down by 
ropes from the walls. No one saw them in the 
snow. They crossed the river on the ice, walked a 
great part of the night, and at last came to Abing- 
don, where horses were waiting for them, and 
thence they rode to Wallingford, where Maude 
met her little son. 

There was not much more fighting after this. 
Stephen kept all the eastern part of the kingdom, 
and Henry was brought up at Gloucester till his 
father sent for him, to take leave of him before 
going on a crusade. Geoffrey died during this 
crusade. He was fond of hunting, and was gene- 
rally seen with a spray of broom blossom in his 
cap. The French name for this plant is genet; 
and thus his nickname Avas " Plantagenet ; " and 
this became a kind of surname to the kings of 
England. 

Henry, called Fitz-empress — or " the Empress's 
son " — came to England again as soon as he was 
grown up ; but instead of going to war, he made 
an agreement with Stephen. Henry would not 
attack Stephen any more, but leave him to reign 
all the clays of his life, provided Stephen engaged 
that Henrv should reign instead of Ins own son 



Stephen. 77 

after his death. This made Stephen's son, Eustace, 
very angry, and he went away in a rage to raise 
troops to maintain his cause ; but he died suddenly 
in the midst of his wild doings, and the king, his 
father, did not live long after him, but died in the 
year 1154. 

Maude had learnt wisdom by her misfortunes. 
She had no further desire to be queen, but lived a 
retired life in a convent, and was much more re- 
spected there than as queen. 




CHAPTER XI. 

HENEY II., FITZ-EMPRESS. 
a.d. 1154—1189. 

HENRY Fitz-Empress is counted as the first 
king of the Plantagenet family, also called 
the House of Anjou. He was a very clever, brisk, 
spirited man, who hardly ever sat down, but was 
always going from place to place, and who would 
let no one disobey him. He kept everybody in 
order, pulled down almost all the Castles that had 
been built in Stephen's time, and would not let 
the barons ill-treat the people. Indeed, everyone 
had been so mixed up together during the wars in 
Stephen's reign, that the grandchildren of the 
Normans who had come over with William the 
Conqueror were now quite English in their feelings. 
French was, however, chiefly spoken at court. 
The king was really a Frenchman, and he married 
a French wife, Eleanor, the lady of Aquitaine, a 

73 




MURDER OF THOMAS A-BECKET. 



Henry IL, Fitz-empress, 81 

great dukedom in the South of France ; and, as 
Henry had already Normandy and Anjou, he really 
was lord of nearly half France. He ruled England 
well ; but he was not a good man, for he cared for 
power and pleasure more than for what was right ; 
and sometimes he fell into such rages that he 
would roll on the floor, and bite the rushes and 
sticks it was strewn with. He made many laws. 
One was that, if a priest or monk was thought to 
have committed any crime, he should be tried by 
the king's judge, instead of the bishop. The Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket, did not 
think it right to consent to this law ; and, though 
he and the king had once been great friends, 
Henry was so angry with him that he was forced 
to leave England, and take shelter with the King 
of France. Six years passed by, and the king pre- 
tended to be reconciled to him, but still, when 
they met, would not give him the kiss of peace. 
The archbishop knew that this showed that the 
king still hated him ; but his flock had been so 
long without a shepherd that he thought it his 
duty to go back to them. Just, after his return, 
he laid under censure some persons who had given 
offence. They Avent and complained to the king, 
and Henry exclaimed in a passion, " Will no one 



82 Young Folks" History of England. 

rid me of this turbulent priest ? " Four of his 
knights who heard these words set forth for Can- 
terbur} r . The archbishop guessed why they were 
come ; but he would not flee again, and waited for 
them by the altar in the cathedral, not even letting 
the doors be shut. There they slew him ; and 
thither, in great grief at the effect of his own 
words, the king came — three years later — to 
show his penitence by entering barefoot, kneeling 
before Thomas's tomb, and causing every priest or 
monk in turn to strike him with a rod. We should 
not exactly call Thomas a martyr now, but he was 
thought so then, because he died for upholding the 
privileges of the Church, and he was held to be a 
very great saint. 

While this dispute was going on, the Earl of 
Pembroke, called Strongbow, one of Henry's no- 
bles, had gone over to Ireland, and obtained a little 
kingdom there, which he professed to hold of 
Henry ; and thus the Kings of England became 
Lords of Ireland, though for a long time they only 
had the Province of Leinster, and were always at 
war with the Irish around. 

Henry was a most powerful king ; but his latter 
years w r ere very unhappy. His wife was not a good 
woman, and her sons were all disobedient and re- 



Henry IL, Fitz-empress, 83 

bellious. Once all the three eldest, Henry, Rich- 
ard, and Geoffrey, and their mother, ran away 
together from his court, and began to make Avar 
upon him. He was much stronger and wiser than 
they, so he soon forced them to submit ; and he 
sent Queen Eleanor away, and shut her up in a 
strong castle in England as long as he lived. Her 
sons were much more fond of her than of their 
father, and they thought this usage so hard, that 
they were all the more ready to break out against 
him. The eldest son, Henry, was leading an army 
against his father, when he was taken ill, and felt 
himself dying. He sent an entreaty that his father 
would forgive him, and come to see him ; but the 
young man had so often been false and treacherous, 
that Henry feared it was only a trick to get him as 
a prisoner, and only sent his ring and a message of 
pardon ; and young Henry died, pressing the ring 
to his lips, and longing to hear his father's voice. 

Geoffrey, the third son, was killed by a fall from 
his horse, and there were only two left alive, Rich- 
ard and John. Just at this time, news came that 
the Mahommedans in the Holy Land had won Je- 
rusalem back again ; and the pope called on all 
Christian princes to leave off quarreling, and go on 
a crusade to recover the Holy Sepulchre. 



84 Young Folks' History of England. 

The kings of England and France, young Rich- 
ard, and many more, were roused to take the cross ; 
but while arrangements for going were being made, 
a fresh* dispute about them arose, and Richard went 
away in a rage, got his friends together, and, with 
King Philip of France to help him, began to make 
war. His father was feeble, and worn out, and 
could not resist as in former times. He fell ill, 
and gave up the struggle, saying he would grant 
all they asked. The list of Richard's friends 
whom he was to pardon was brought to him, and 
the first name he saw in it was that of John, his 
youngest son, and his darling, the one who had 
never before rebelled. That quite broke his heart, 
his illness grew worse, and he talked about an old 
eagle being torn to pieces by his eaglets. And so, 
in the year 1189, Henry II. died the saddest death, 
perhaps, that an old man can die, for his sons had 
brought down his gray hairs with sorrow to the 
grave. 



• 




HENRY II. S TOMB AT FONTEVliAXD. 



CHAPTER XII. 

RICHARD I., LION-HEART. 
a.d. 1189—1199. 

RICHARD was greatly grieved at his father's 
death, and when he came and looked at the 
dead body, in Fontevraud Abbey Church, he cried 
out, "Alas! it was I who killed him!" But it 
was too late now : he could not make up for what 
he had done, and he had to think about the Cru- 
sade he had promised to make. Richard was so 
brave and strong that he was called Lion-heart ; 
he was very noble and good in some ways, but his 
fierce, passionate temper did him a great deal of 
harm. He, and King Philip of France, and several 
other great princes, all met in the island of Sicily 
in the Mediterranean Sea, and thence sailed for the 
Holy Land. The lady whom Richard was to marry 
came to meet him in Sicily. Her name Was Beren- 
garia ; but, as it was Lent, he did not marry her 
87 



88 Young Folks' History of England. 

then. She went on to the Holy Land in a ship 
with his sister Joan, and tried to land in the island 
of Cypress ; but the people were inhospitable, and 
would not let them come. So Richard, in his great 
anger, conquered the isle, and was married to 
Berengaria there. 

The Mahommedans who held Palestine at that 
time were called Saracens, and had a very brave 
prince at their head named Saladin, which means 
Splendor of Religion. He was very good, just, 
upright, and truth-telling, and his Saracens fought 
so well, that the Crusaders would hardly have won 
a bit of ground if the Lion-heart had not been so 
brave. At last, they did take one city on the 
coast named Acre ; and one of the princes, Leo- 
pold, Duke of Austria, set up his banner on the 
walls. Richard did not think it ought to be there : 
he pulled it up and threw it down into the ditch, 
asking the duke how he durst take the honors of a 
king. Leopold was sullen, and brooded over the 
insult, and King Philip thought Richard so over- 
bearing, that he could not bear to be in the army 
with him any longer. In truth, though Philip had 
pretended to be his friend, and had taken his part 
against his father, that was really only to hurt 
King Henry ; he hated Richard quite as much, or 




RICHARD REMOVING THE ARCHDUKE'S BANNER. 



Richard Z, Lion-heart. 91 

more, and only wanted to get home first in order 
to do him as much harm as he could while he was 
away. So Philip said it was too hot for him in the 
Holy Land, and made him ill. He sailed back to 
France, while Richard remained, though the cli- 
mate really did hurt his health, and he often had 
fevers there. When he was ill, Saladin used to 
send him grapes, and do all he could to show how 
highly he thought of so brave a man. Once Sala- 
din sent him a beautiful horse ; Richard told the 
Earl of Salisbury to try it, and no sooner was the 
earl mounted, than the horse ran away with him to 
the Saracen army. Saladin was very much vexed, 
and was afraid it would be taken for a trick to 
take the English king prisoner, and he gave the 
earl a quieter horse to ride back with. Richard 
fought one terrible battle at Joppa with the Sara- 
cens, and then he tried to go on to take Jerusalem ; 
but he wanted to leave a good strong castle behind 
him at Ascalon, and set all his men to work to 
build it up. When they grumbled, he worked 
with them, and asked the duke to do the same ; 
but Leopold said gruffly that he was not a carpen- 
ter or a mason. Richard was so provoked that he 
struck him a blow, and the duke went home in a 



92 Young Folks' History of England. 

So many men had gone home, that Richard 
found his army was not strong enough to try to 
take Jerusalem. He was greatly grieved, for he 
knew it was his own fault for not having shewn 
the temper of a Crusader ; and when he came to 
the top of a hill, whence the Holy City could be 
seen, he would not look at it, but turned away, 
saying, " They who are not worthy to win it are 
not worthy to behold it." It was of no use for him 
to stay with so few men ; besides, tidings came 
from home that King Philip and his own brother, 
John, were doing all the mischief they could. So 
he made a peace for three years between the Sara- 
cens and Christians, hoping to come back again 
after that to rescue Jerusalem. But on his way 
home there were terrible storms ; his ships were 
scattered, and his own ship was driven up into the 
Adriatic Sea, where he was robbed by pirates, or 
sea robbers, and then was shipwrecked. There 
was no way for him to get home but through the 
lands of Leopold of Austria ; so he pretended to 
be a merchant, and set out attended only by a boy. 
He fell ill at a little inn, and while lie was in bed 
the boy went into the kitchen with the king's 
glove in his belt. It was an embroidered glove, 
such as merchants never used, and people asked 



■Richard i., Lion-heart. 93 

questions, and guessed that the boy's master must 
be some great man. The Duke of Austria heard 
of it, sent soldiers to take him, and shut him up as 
a prisoner in one of his castles. Afterwards, the 
duke gave him up for a large sum of money to the 
Emperor of Germany. All this time Richard's 
wife and mother had been in great sorrow and fear, 
trying to find out what had become of him. It is 
said that he was found at last by his friend, the 
minstrel Blondel. A minstrel was a person who 
made verses and sung them. Many of the nobles 
and knights in Queen Eleanor's Duchy of Aqui- 
taine were minstrels — and Richard was a very 
good one himself, and amused himself in his cap- 
tivity by making verses. This is certainly true — 
though I cannot answer for it that the pretty story 
is true, which says that Blondel sung at all the 
castle courts in Germany, till he heard his master's 
voice take up and reply to his song. 

The Queens, Eleanor and Berengaria, raised a 
ransom — that is, a sum of money to buy his free- 
dom — though his brother John tried to prevent 
them, and the King of France did his best to hinder 
the emperor from releasing him ; but the Pope in- 
sisted that the brave crusader should be set at 
liberty : and Richard came home, after a year and 



94 Young Folks' History of England. 

a-half of captivity. He freely forgave John for all 
the mischief he had done or tried to do, though he 
thought so ill of him as to say, "I wish I may for- 
get John's injuries to me as soon as he will forget 
my pardon of him." 

Richard only lived two years after he came back. 
He was besieging a castle in Aquitaine, where there 
was some treasure that he thought was unlawfully 
kept from him, when he was struck in the shoul- 
der by a bolt from a cross-bow, and the surgeons 
treated it so unskilfully that in a few days he died. 
The man who had shot the bolt was made pris- 
oner, but the Lion-heart's last act was to command 
that no harm should be done to him. The soldiers, 
however, in their grief and rage for the king, did 
put him to death in a cruel manner. 

Richard desired to be buried at the feet of his 
father, in Fontevraud Abbey, where he had once 
bewailed his undutiful conduct, and now wished 
his body forever to lie in penitence. The figures, 
in stone, of the father, mother, and son, who 
quarreled so much in life, all lie on one monument 
now, and with them Richard's youngest sister, 
Joan, who died nearly at the same time as he died, 
partly of grief fur him. 



CHAPTER XIIL 

JOHN, LACKLAND, 
a.d. 1199—1216. 

AS a kind of joke, John, King Henry's young- 
est son, had been called Lackland, because 
he had nothing when his brothers each had some 
great dukedom. The name suited him only too 
well before the end of his life. The English made 
him king at once. They always did take a grown- 
up man for their king, if the last king's son was 
but a child. Richard had never had any children 
but his brother Geoffrey, who was older than John, 
had left a son named Arthur, who was about 
twelve years old, and who was rightly the Duke 
of Normandy and Count of Anjou. King Philip, 
who was always glad to vex whoever was king of 
England, took Arthur under his protection, and 
promised to get Normandy out of John's hands. 

However, John had a meeting with him and per- 
95 



96 Young Folks'' History of England. 

suacled him to desert Arthur, and marry his son 
Louis to John's own niece, Blanche, who had a 
chance of being queen of part of Spain. Still Ar- 
thur lived at the French King's court, and when 
he was sixteen years old, Philip helped him to 
raise an army and go to try his fortune against 
his uncle. He laid siege to Mirabeau, a town 
where his grandmother, Queen Eleanor, was living. 
John, who was then in Normandy, hurried to her 
rescue, beat Arthur's army, made him prisoner and 
carried him off, first to Rouen, and then to the 
strong castle of Falaise. Nobody quite knows 
what was done to him there. The governor, 
Hubert de Burgh, once found him fighting hard, 
though with no weapon but a stool, to defend him- 
self from some ruffians who had been sent to put 
out his eyes. Hubert saved him from these men, 
but shortly after this good man was sent elsewhere 
by the king, and John came himself to Faliase. 
Arthur was never seen alive again, and it is be- 
lieved that John took him out in a boat in the 
river at night, stabbed him with his own hand, and 
threw his body into the river. There was, any 
way, no doubt that John was guilty of his nephew's 
death, and he was fully known to be one of the 
most selfish and cruel men who ever lived ; and so 




m 



:;.■,■■.■■■' 
■ill 



; 

; 



John, Lackland. 99 

lazy, that he let Philip take Normandy from him, 
without stirring a finger to save the grand old 
dukedom of his forefathers ; so that nothing is left 
of it to us now but the four little islands, Guernsey, 
Jersey, Alderney, and Sark. 

Matters became much worse in England, when 
he quarreled with the Pope, whose name was Inno- 
cent, about who should be archbishop of Canter- 
bury. The Pope wanted a man named Stephen 
Langton to be archbishop, but the king swore he 
should never come into the kingdom. Then the 
Pope punished the kingdom, by forbidding all 
church services in all parish churches. This was 
termed putting the kingdom under an interdict. 
John was not much distressed by this, though his 
people were ; but when he found that Innocent 
was stirring up the King of France to come to at- 
tack him, he thought it time to make his peace 
with the Pope. So he not only consented to re- 
ceive Stephen Langton, but he even knelt down 
before the Pope's legate, or messenger, and took off 
his crown, giving it up to the legate, in token that 
he only held the kingdom from the Pope. It was 
two or three days before it was given back to him ; 

and the Pope held himself to be lord of England, 

7 



100 Young Folks' History of England. 

and made the king and people pay him money 
whenever he demanded it. 

r All this time John's cruelty and savageness were 
making the whole kingdom miserable ; and at last 
the great barons could bear it no longer. They 
met together and agreed that they would make John 
swear to govern by the good old English laws that 
had prevailed before the Normans came. The diffi- 
culty was to be sure of what these laws were, for most 
of the copies of them had been lost. However, 
Archbishop Langton and some of the wisest of the 
barons put together a set of laws — some copied, 
some recollected, some old, some new — but all 
such as to give the barons some control of the king, 
and hinder him from getting savage soldiers to- 
gether to frighten people into doing whatever he 
chose to make them. These laws they called 
Magna Carta, or the great charter ; and they all 
came in armor, and took John by surprise at Wind- 
sor. He came to meet them in a meadow named 
Runnymede, on the bank of the Thames, and there 
they forced him to sign the charter, for winch all 
Englishmen are grateful to them. 

But he did not mean to keep it ! No, not he ! 
He had one of his father's fits of rage when he got 
back to Windsor Castle — he gnawed the sticks 




JOHN'S ANGER AFTER SIGNING MAGNA CHARTA, 



John, Lackland. 103 

for rage, and swore he was no king. Then lie sent 
for more of the fierce soldiers, who went about in 
bands, ready to be hired, and prepared to take ven- 
geance on the barons. They found themselves not 
strong enough to make head against him ; so they 
invited Louis, the son of Philip of France and hus- 
band of John's niece, to come and be their king. 
He came, and was received in London, while John 
and his bands of soldiers were roaming about the 
eastern counties, wasting and burning everywhere 
till they came to the Wash — that curious bay be- 
tween Lincolnshire and Norfolk, where so many 
rivers run into the sea. There is a safe way across 
the sands in this bay when the tide is low, but 
when it is coming in and meets the rivers, the 
waters rise suddenly into a flood. So it happened 
to King John ; he did get out himself, but all the 
carts with his goods and treasures were lost, and 
many of his men. He was full of rage and grief, 
but he went on to the abbey where he meant to 
sleep. He supped on peaches and new ale, and 
soon after became very ill. He died in a few da}*s, 
a miserable, disgraced man, with half his people 
fighting against him and London in the hands of 
his worst enemy. 




CHAPTER XIV. 



HENRY III., OF WINCHESTER, 



A.D. 1216—1272. 



KING John left two little sons, Henry and 
Richard, nine and seven years old, and all 
the English barons felt that they would rather have 
Henry as their king than the French Lonis, whom 
they had only called in because John was such a 
wretch- So when little Henry had been crowned 
104 



Henry III., of Winchester. 105 

at Gloucester, with his mother's bracelet, swearing 
to rule according to Magna Carta, and good Hubert 
de Burgh undertook to govern for him, one baron 
after another came back to him. Louis was beaten, 
in a battle at Lincoln ; and when his wife sent him 
more troops, Hubert de Burgh got ships together 
and sunk many vessels, and drove the others back 
in the Straits of Dover ; so that Louis was forced 
to go home and leave England in peace. 

Henry must have been too young to understand 
about Magna Carta when he swore to it, but it was 
tlie trouble of all his long reign to get him to observe 
it. It was not that he was wicked like his father 
— for he was very religious and kind-hearted — but 
he was too good-natured, and never could say No 
to anybody. Bad advisers got about him when he 
grew up, and persuaded him to let them take good 
Hubert do Burgh and imprison him. He had 
taken refuge in a church, but they dragged him out 
and took him to a blacksmith to have chains put on 
his feet ; the smith however said he would never 
forge chains for the man who had saved his coun- 
try from the French. De Burgh was afterwards 
set free, and died in peace and honor. 

Henry was a builder of beautiful churches. 
Westminster Abbuy, as it is now, was one. And 



106 Young Folks' History of Fyigland. 

he was so charitable to the jDoor that, when he had 
his children weighed, he gave their weight in gold 
and silver in alms. But he gave to everyone who 
asked, and so always wanted money ; and some- 
times his men could get nothing for the king and 
queen to eat, but by going and taking sheep and 
poultry from the poor farmers around ; so that 
things were nearly as bad as under William Rufus 
— because the king w^as so foolishly good-natured. 
The Pope was always sending for money, too ; and 
the king tried to raise it in ways that, according to 
Magna Carta, he had sworn not to do. His foreign 
friends told him that if he minded Magna Carta he 
would be a poor creature — not like a king who 
might do all he pleased ; and whenever he listened 
to them he broke the laws of Magna Carta. Then, 
when his barons complained and frightened him, 
he swore again to keep them ; so that nobody could 
trust him, and his weakness was almost as bad for 
the kingdom as John's wickedness. When they 
could bear it no longer, the barons all met him at 
the council which was called the Parliament, from 
a French word meaning talk. This time they 
came in armor, bringing all their fighting men, and 
declared that he had broken his word so often that 
they should appoint some of their own number to 




KING HENRY AND HIS BARON; 



Henry III., of Winchester. 109 

watch him, and hinder his doing anything against 
the laws he had sworn to observe, or from getting 
money from the people without their consent. He 
was very angry ; but he was in their power, and 
had to submit to swear that so it should be ; and 
Simon do Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who had 
married his sister, was appointed among the lords 
who were to keep w^atch over him. Henry could 
not bear this ; he felt himself to be less than ever 
a king, and tried to break loose. He had never 
cared for his promises ; but his brave son EdAvard, 
who was now grown up, cared a great deal : and 
they put the question to Louis, King of France, 
whether the king was bound by the oath he had 
made to be under Montfort and his council. This 
Louis was son to the one who had been driven 
back by Hubert de Burgh. He was one of the 
best men and kings that ever lived, and he tried to 
judge rightly ; but he scarcely thought how much 
provocation Henry had given, when he said that 
subjects had no right to frighten their king, and so 
that Henry and Edward were not obliged to keep 
the oath. 

Thereupon they got an army together, and so 
did Simon de Montfort and the barons ; and they 
met at a place called LeAves, in Sussex. Edward 



110 Young Folks' History of England. 

got the advantage at first, and galloped away, 
driving his enemies before him ; but when he 
turned round and came back, he found that Simon 
de Montfort had beaten the rest of the army, and 
made his father and uncle Richard prisoners. In- 
deed the barons threatened to cut off Richard's 
head if Edward went on fighting with them ; and 
to save his uncle's life, he too, gave himself up to 
them. 

Simon de Montfort now governed all the king- 
dom. He still called Henry king, but did not let 
him do anything, and watched him closely that he' 
might not get away ; and Edward was kept a 
prisoner — first in one castle, then in another. 
Simon was a good and high-minded man himself, 
who only wanted to do what was best for every- 
one ; but he had a family of proud and overbearing 
sons, who treated all who came in their way so ill, 
that most of the barons quarreled with them. One 
of these barons sent Edward a beautiful horse; 
and one day when he was riding out from Here- 
ford Castle with his keepers, he proposed to them 
to ride r,aces, while he was to look on and decide 
which was the swiftest. Thus they all tired out 
their horses, and as soon as he saw that they could 
hardly get them along, Edward spurred his own fresh 



Henry III., of Winchester. Ill 

horse, and galloped off to meet the friends who 
were waiting for him. All who were discontented 
with the Montforts joined him, and he soon had a 
large army. He marched against Montfort, and 
met him at Evesham. The poor old king was in 
Montfort's army, and in the battle was thrown 
down, and would have been killed if he had not 
called out — " Save me, save me, I am Henry of 
Winchester." His son heard the call, and, rushing 
to his side, carried him to a place of safety. His 
army was much the strongest, and Montfort had 
known from the first that there was no hope for 
him. " God have mercy on our souls, for our bodies 
are Sir Edward's," he had said ; and he died brave- 
ly on the field of battle. 

Edward brought his father back to reign in all 
honor, but he took the whole management of the 
kingdom, and soon set things in order again — 
taking care that Magna Carta should be properly 
observed. When everything was peaceful at home, 
he set out upon a Crusade with the good King of 
France, and while he was gone his father died, 
after a reign of fifty-six years. There were only 
three English Kings who reigned more than fifty 
years, and these are easy to remember, as each was 
the third of his name — Henry III., Edward III., 



112 Young Folks' History of England 

and George III. In the reign of Henry III. the 
custom of having Parliaments was established, 
and the king was prevented from getting money 
from the people unless the Parliament granted it. 
The Parliament has, ever since, been made up of 
great lords, who are born to it : and, besides them, 
of men chosen by the people in the counties and 
towns, to speak and decide for them. The clergy 
have a meeting of their own called Convocation ; 
and these three — Clergy, Lords, and Commons — 
are called the Three Estates of the llealmo 




CHAPTER XV. 

EDWAED I., LONGSHANKS. 
A.D. 1272—1307. 

THE son of Henry III. returned from the Holy 
Land to be one of our noblest, best, and 
wisest kings. Edward I. — called Longshanks in 
a kind of joke, because he was the tallest man in 
the Court — was very grand-looking and hand- 
some ; and could leap, run, ride, and fight in his 
heavy armor better than anyone else. He was 
brave, just, and affectionate ; and his sweet wife, 
Eleanor of Castille, was warmly loved by him and 
all the nation. He built as many churches and was 
as charitable as his father, but he was much more 
careful to make only good men bishops, and he al- 
lowed no wasting or idling. He faithfully obeyed 
Magna Carta, and made everyone else obey the 

113 



114 Young Folks History of England. 

law — indeed many good laws and customs have 
begun from his time. Order was the great thing 
he eared for, and under him the English grew 
prosperous and happy, when nobody was allowed to 
rob them. 

The Welsh were, however, terrible robbers. 
You remember that they are the remains of the old 
Britons, who used to have all Britain. They had 
never left of! thinking that they had a right to it, 
and coming down out of their mountains to burn 
the houses and steal the cattle of the Saxons, as 
they still called the English. Edward tried to make 
friends with their princes — Llewellyn and David 
— and to make them keep their people in order. 
He gave David lands in England, and let Llewel- 
lyn many his cousin, Eleanor de Mont fort. But 
they broke their promises shamefully, and did such 
savage things to the English on their borders that 
he was forced to put a stop to it, and went to war. 
David was made prisoner, and put to death as a 
traitor ; and Llewellyn was met by some soldiers 
near the biidge of Builth and killed, without their 
knowing who he was. Edward had, in the mean- 
time, conquered most of the country ; and he told 
the Welsh chiefs that, if they would come and 
meet him at Caernarvon Castle, he would give 



/ / c 



Edward Z, Longshanks. 117 

them a prince who had been born in their country 
— had never spoken a word of any language but 
theirs. The}' all came, and the king came down 
to them with his own little baby son in his arms, 
who had lately been born in Caernarvon Castle, 
and, of course, had never spoken any language at 
all. The Welsh were obliged to accept him ; and 
he had a Welsh nurse, that the first words he 
spoke might be Welsh. They thought he would 
have been altogether theirs, as he then had an 
elder brother ; but in a year or two the oldest 
boy died ; and, ever since that time, the eldest son 
of the King of England has alwaj-s been Prince of 
Wales. 

There was a plan for the little Prince Edward 
of Caernarvon being married to a little girl, who 
was grand-daughter to the King of Scotland, and 
would be Queen of Scotland herself — and this 
would have led to the whole island being under 
one king — but, unfortunately, the little maiden 
died. It was so hard to decide who ought to 
reign, out of all her cousins, that they asked king 
Edward to choose among them — since everyone 
knew that a great piece of Scotland belonged to 
him as over-lord, just as his own dukedom of 
Aquitaine belonged to the King of France over 



118 Young Folks' History of England. 

him; and the Kings of Scotland alwaj's used to 
pay homage to those of England for it. 

Edward chose John Balliol, the one who had the 
best right ; but he made him understand that, as over- 
lord, he meant to see that as good order was kept 
in Scotland as in England. Now, the English 
kings had never meddled with Scottish affairs be- 
fore, and the Scots were furious at finding that he 
did so. They said it Avas" insulting them and their 
king; and poor Balliol did not know what to do 
among them, but let them defy Edward in his 
name. This brought Edward and his army to 
Scotland. The strong places were taken and filled 
with English soldiers, and Balliol was made pris- 
oner, adjudged to have rebelled against his lord 
and forfeited his kingdom, and was sent awa}^ to 
France. 

Edward thought it would be much better for 
the whole country to join Scotland to England, 
and rule it himself. And so, no doubt, it would 
have been ; but many of the Scots were not Avill- 
ing, — and in spite of all the care he could take, 
the soldiers who guarded his castles often behaved 
shamefully to the people round them. One gen- 
tleman, named William Wallace, whose home had 
been broken up by some soldiers, fled to the 



Edivard J., Longshanks. 119 

woods and Mils, and drew so many Scots round 
him that he had quite an army. There was a 
great fight at the Bridge of Stirling ; the English 
governors were beaten, and Wallace led his men 
over the Border into Northumberland, where they 
plundered and burnt wherever they went, in re- 
venge for what had been done in Scotland. 

Edward gathered his forces and came to Scot- 
land. The army that Wallace had drawn together 
could not stand before him, but was defeated at 
Falkirk, and Wallace had to take to the woods. 
Edward promised pardon to all who would submit, 
— and almost all did ; but Wallace still lurked in 
the hills, till one of his own countrymen betrayed 
him to the English, when he was sent to London, 
and put to death. 

All seemed quieted, and English garrisons — 
that is, guarding soldiers — were in all the Scottish 
towns and castles, when, suddenly, Robert Bruce, 
one of the half English, half Scottish nobles be- 
tween whom Edward had judged, ran away from 
the English court, with his horse's shoes put on 
backwards. The next thing that was heard of him 
was, that he had quarreled with one of his cousins 
in the church at Dumfries, and stabbed him to the 



120 Young Folks' History of England. 

heart, and then had gone to Scone and had been 
crowned King of Scotland. 

Edward was bitterly angry now. He sent on an 
army to deal unsparingly with the rising, and set 
out to follow with his son, now grown to man's 
estate. Crueller things than he had ever allowed 
before were done to the places where Robert Bruce 
had been acknowledged as king, and his friends 
were hung as traitors wherever they were found ; 
but Bruce himself could not be caught. He was 
living a wild life among the lakes and hills ; and 
Edward, who was an old man now, had been taken 
so ill at Carlisle, that he could not come on to keep 
his own strict rule among his men. All the winter 
he lay sick there ; and in the spring he heard that 
Bruce, whom he thought quite crushed, had sud- 
denly burst upon the English, defeated them, and 
was gathering strength every day. 

Edward put on his armor and set out for Scot- 
land; but at Burgh-on-the-Sands his illness came 
on again, and he died there at seventy years old. 

He was buried in Westminster Abbey, under a 
great block of stone, and the inscription on it only 
says, "Edward L, 1308 — The Hammer of the 
Scots — Keep Treaties." His good wife, Queen 
Eleanor, had died many years before him, and was 



Edward Z, Long shanks. 



121 



also buried at Westminster. All the way from 
Grantham, in Lincolnshire — where she died — to 
London, Edward set up a beautiful stone cross 
wherever her body rested for the night — fifteen of 
them — but only three are left now. 




CHAPTER XVI. 

EDWARD II., OF CAERNARVON. 
A.D. 1307—1327. 

UNLIKE his father in everything was the 
young Edward, who had just come to man- 
hood when he became king. Nay, he never did 
come to manhood in mind, for he was as silly and 
easily led as his grandfather, Henry III., had been. 
He had a friend — a gay, handsome, thoughtless, 
careless young man — named Piers Gaveston, who 
had often led him into mischief. His father had 
banished this dangerous companion, and forbidden, 
under pain of his heaviest displeasure, the two 
young men from ever meeting again ; but the mo- 
ment the old king was dead, Edward turned back 
from Scotland, where he was so much wanted, and 
sent for Piers Gaveston again. At the same time 



Edward II.. of Caernarvon. 123 

his bride arrived — Isabel, daughter to the King of 
France, a beautiful girl — and there was a splendid 
wedding feast ; but the king and Gaveston were 
both so vain and conceited, that they cared more 
about their own beauty and fine dress than the 
young queen's, and she found herself quite neg- 
lected. The nobles, too, were angered at the airs 
that Gaveston gave himself; he not only dre 
splendidly, had a huge train of servants, and man- 
aged the king as he pleased, but he was very 
insolent to them, and gave them nick-names. He 
Called the king's cou>in, the Earl of Lancaster, 
"the old hog;" the Earl of Pembroke, "Joseph 
the Jew ; " and the Earl of Warwick, " the black 
dog." Meantime, the king and he were wasting 
the treasury, and doing harm of all kinds, till the 
barons gathered together and forced the king to 
send his favorite into banishment. Gaveston 
went, but he soon came back again and joined the 
king, who was at last setting out for Scotland. 

The nobles, however, would not endure Lis re- 
turn. They siezed him. brought him to Warwick 
Castle, and there held a kind of Court, which 
could hardly be called of Justice, for they had no 
right at all to sentence him. He spoke them fair 
now, and begged hard for his life . but they could 



124 Young Folks' History of England. 

not forget the names he had called them, and he 
was beheaded on Blacklow Hill. 

Edward was full of grief and anger for the cruel 
death of his friend ; but he was forced to keep it 
out of sight, for all the barons were coming round 
him for the Scottish war. While he had been 
wasting his time, Robert Bruce had obtained every 
strong place in Scotland, except Stirling Castle, 
and there the English governor had promised to 
yield, if succor did not come from England within 
a year and a day. 

The year was almost over when Edward came 
into Scotland with a fine army of English, Welsh, 
and Gascons from Aquitaine ; but Robert Bruce 
was a great and able general, and he was no gene- 
ral at all ; so when the armies met at Bannock- 
burn, under the walls of Stirling, the English were 
worse beaten than ever they had been anywhere 
else, except at Hastings. Edward was obliged to 
flee away to England, and though Bruce was never 
owned by the English to be King of Scotland, 
there he really reigned, having driven every 
Englishman away, and taken all the towns and 
castles. Indeed, the English had grown so much 
afraid of the Scots, that a hundred would llee at 
sight of two. 



Edward II., of Caernarvon. 125 

The king comforted himself with a new friend 
— Hugh le Despencer — who, with his old father, 
had his own way, just like Gaveston. Again the 
barons rose, and required that they should be ban- 
ished. They went, but the Earl of Lancaster car- 
ried his turbulence too far, and, when he heard 
that the father had come back, raised an army, and 
was even found to have asked Robert Bruce to 
help him against his own king. This made the 
other barons so angry that they joined the king 
against him, and he was made prisoner and put to 
death for making war on the king, and making 
friends with the enemies of the country. 

Edward had his Le Despencers back again, and 
very discontented the sight made the whole coun- 
try — and especially the queen, whom he had al- 
ways neglected, though she now had four children. 
He had never tried to gain her love, and she hated 
him more and more. There was some danger of a 
quarrel with her brother, the King of France, and 
she offered to go with her son Edward, now about 
fourteen, and settle it. But this was only an 
excuse. She went about to the princes abroad, 
telling them how ill she was used by her husband, 
and asking for help. A good many knights be- 
lieved and pitied her, and came with her to Eng- 



126 Young Folks' History of England. 

land to help. All the English who hated the Le 
Despencers joined her, and she led the young 
prince against his father. Edward and his friends 
were hunted across into Wales ; but they were 
tracked out one by one, and the Despencers were 
put to a cruel death, though Edward gave himself 
up in hopes of saving them. 

The queen and her friends made him own that 
he did not deserve to reign, and would give up the 
crown to his son. Then they kept him in prison, 
taking him from one castle to another, in great 
misery. The rude soldiers of his guard mocked 
him and crowned him with hay, and gave him dirty 
ditch water to shave with ; and when they found 
he was too strong and healthy to die only of bad 
food and damp lodging, they murdered him one 
night in Berkeley Castle. He lies buried in 
Gloucester Cathedral, not far from that other fool- 
ish and unfortunate prince, Robert of Normandy. 
He had reigned twenty years, and was dethroned 
in 1327. 

The queen then wanted to get rid of Edmund, 
Earl of Kent, the poor king's youngest brother. 
So a report was spread that Edward was alive, and 
Edmund was allowed to peep into a dark prison 
room, where he saw a man who he thought was his 



v^ 




EDWARD II. AND HIS JAILERS. 



Edward II„ of Caernarvon. 



129 



brother. He tried to stir up friends to set the 
king free ; but this was called rebelling, and he was 
taken and beheaded at Winchester by a criminal 
condemned to die, for it was .such a wicked sentence 
that nobody else could be found to carry it out. 





CHAPTER XVII. 



EDWARD III. 



a.d. 1327—1377. 



FOR about three years, the cruel Queen Isabel 
and her friends managed all the country ; but 
as soon as her son — Edward III., who had been 
crowned instead of his father — understood how 
wicked she had been, and was strong enough to 
deal with her party, he made them prisoners, put 
130 



Edward III. 131 

the worst of tlicm to death, and kept the queen 
shut up in a castle as long as she lived. He had a 
very good queen of his own, named Philippa, who 
brought cloth-workers over from her own country, 
Ifainault (now part of Belgium), to teach the En- 
glish their trade-, and thus began to render England 
the chief country in the world for wool and cloth. 

Queen Isabel, Edward's mother, had, you remem- 
ber, been daughter of the King of France. All her 
three brothers died without leaving a son, and their 
cousin, whose name was Philip, began to reign in 
their stead. Edward, however, fancied that the 
crown of France properly belonged to him, in right 
of his mother ; but he did not stir about it at once, 
and, perhaps, never would have done so at all, but 
for two things. One was, that the King of France, 
Philip VI., had been so foolish as to fancy that one 
of his lords, named Robert of Artois, had been 
bewitching him — by sticking pins into a wax 
figure and roasting it before a fire. So this Robert 
was driven out of France and, coming to England, 
stirred Edward up to go and overthrow Philip. 
The other was, that the English barons had grown 
so restless and troublesome, that they would not 
stay peacefully at home and mind their own 
estates 3 — but if they had not wars abroad, they 



132 Young Folks' History of England, 

always gave the king trouble at home ; and Edward 
liked better that they should fight for him than 
against him. So lie called himself Kin<x of France 
and England, and began a war which lasted — with 
short spaces of quiet — for full one hundred years, 
and only ended in the time of the great grand- 
children of the men who entered upon it. There 
was one great sea-fight off Sluys, when the king sat 
in his ship, in a black velvet dress, and gained a 
great victory ; but it was a good while before there 
was any great battle by land — so long, that the 
king's eldest son, Edward Prince of Wales, was 
sixteen years old. He is generally called the Black 
Prince — no one quite knows why, for his hair, like 
that of all these old English kings, was quite light, 
and his eyes were blue. He was such a spirited 
young soldier, that when the French army under 
King Philip came in sight of the English one, near 
the village of Crecy, King Edward said he should 
have the honor of the day, and stood under a wind- 
mill on a hill watching the fight, while the prince led 
the English army. He gained a very great victory, 
and in the evening came and knelt before his father, 
saying the praise was not his own but the king's, 
who had ordered all so wisely. Afterwards, while 
Philip had lied away, Edward besieged Calais, the 




QUEEN PHILIPPA ON HEE KNEES BEFOEE THE KING, 



Edward III. 133 

town just opposite to Dover. The inhabitants 
were very brave, and held out for a long time ; 
and while Edward was absent, the Scots under'* 
David, the son of Robert Bruce, came over the 
Border, and began to burn and plunder in North- 
umberland. However, Philippa could be brave in 
time of need. She did not send for her husband, 
but called an army together, and the Scots were so 
well beaten at Neville's Cross, that their king, 
David himself, was obliged to give himself up to an 
English squire. The man would not let the queen 
have his prisoner, but rode day and night to 
Dover, and then crossed to Calais to tell the king, 
who bade him put King David into Queen 
Philippa's keeping. She came herself to the camp, 
just as the brave men of Calais had been starved 
out ; and Edward had said he would only consent 
not to burn the town down, if six of the chief 
townsmen would bring him the keys of the gates, 
kneeling, with sackcloth on, and halters round 
their necks, ready to be hung. Queen Philippa 
wept when she saw them, and begged that they 
might be spared ; and when the king granted them 
to her she had them led away, and gave each a 
good dinner and a fresh suit of clothes. The king, 
however, turned all the French people out of 



134 Young Folks' History of England. 

Calais, and filled it with English, and it remained 
quite an English town for more than 200 years. 

King Philip VI. of France died, and his son 
John became king, while still the war went on. 
The Black Prince and John had a terrible battle 
at a place called Poitiers, and the English gained 
another great victory. King John and one of his 
sons were made prisoners, but when they were 
brought to the tent where the Black Prince was to 
snp, he made them sit down at the table before 
him, and waited on them as if they had been his 
guests instead of his prisoners. He did all he could 
to prevent captivity being a pain to them ; and 
when he brought them to London, he gave John a 
tall white horse to ride, and only rode a small pony 
himself by his side. There were two kings prison- 
ers in the Tower of LqiicIoii at once, and they were 
treated as if they were visitors and friends. John 
was allowed to go home, provided he would pay a 
ransom by degrees, as he could get the money 
together; and, in the meantime, his two elder sons 
were to be kept at Calais in his stead. But they 
would not stay at Calais, and King John could not 
obtain the sum for his ransom ; so, rather than 
cheat King Edw ard, he wenTTback to his prison in 
England again. He died soon after; and his son 




THE BLACK PRINCE SERVING THE FRENCH KING 



Edward III. 137 

Charles was a cleverer and wiser man, who knew 
it was better notTcTright battles with the English, 
but made a truce, or short peace. 

Prince Edward governed Txlat part of the south 
of France that belonged to his father ; but he went 
on a foolish expedition into Spain, to help a very 
bad king whom his subjects had driven out, and 
there caught aiT~illness from which he never quite 
recovered. While he was ill King Charles began 
the war again ; and, though there was no battle, he 
tormented the English, and took the castles and 
towns they held. The Black Prince tried to fight, 
but he was too weak and ill to do much, and was 
obliged to go home, and leave the government to 
his brother John, Duke of Lancaster, He lived 
about six years after he came home, and then died, 
to the great sorrow of everyone. His father, King 
Edward, was now too old and feeble to attend to 
the affairs of the country. Queen Philippa was 
dead too, and as no one took proper care of the 
poor old king, he fell into the hands of bad ser- 
vants, who made themselves rich and neglected 
him. When, at length, he lay dying, they stole 
the ring off his finger before he had breathed his 
last, and left him all alone, with the doors open, till 



138 Young Folks History of England, 

a priest came by, and stayed and prayed by him till 
his last moment. He had reigned exactly fifty 
years. You had better learn and remember the 
names of his sons, as you will hear more about 
some of them. They were Edward, Lionel, John, 
Edmund, and Thomas. Edward was Prince of 
Wales; Lionel, Duke of Clarence; John, Duke of 
Lancaster; Edmund, Duke of York; and Thomas, 
Duke of Gloucester. Edward and Lionel both 
died before their father. Edward had left a son 
named Richard ; Lionel had left a daughter named 
Philippa. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

KICHAKD II. 

A.D. 1377—1399. 

r I ^HESE were not very good times in England. 
-*■ The new king, Richard, was only eleven 
years old, and his three uncles did not care much 
for his good or the good of the nation. There was 
not much fighting going on in France, but for the 
little there was a great deal of money was wanting, 
and the great lords were apt to be very hard upon 
the poor people on their estates. They would not 
let them be taught to read ; and if a poor man who 
belonged to an estate went away to a town, his lord 
could have him brought back to his old home. 
Any tax, too, fell more heavily on the poor than 
the rich. One tax, especially, called the poll tax, 
which was made when Richard was sixteen, vexed 
139 



140 Young Folks' History of England, 

them greatly. Everyone above fifteen years old. 
had to pay fourpence, and the collectors were often 
very rude and insolent. A man named Wat Tyler, 
in Kent, was so angry with a rude collector as to 
strike him dead. All the villagers came together with 
sticks, and scythes, and flails ; and Wat Tyler told 
them they would all go to London, and tell the 
king how his poor commons were treated. More 
people and more joined them on the way, and an 
immense multitude of wild looking men came 
pouring into London, where the Lord Mayor and 
Aldermen were taken by surprise, and could do 
nothing to stop them. They did not do much harm 
then ; they lay on the grass all night round the 
Tower, and said they wanted to speak to the king. 
In the morning he came down to his barge, and 
meant to have spoken to them; but his people, 
seeing such a host of wild men, took fright, and 
carried him back again. He went out again the 
next day on horseback ; but while he was speaking 
to some of them, the worst of them broke into the 
Tower, where they seized Archbishop Simon of 
Canterbury, and fancying he was one of the king's 
bad advisers, they cut off his head. Richard had 
to sleep in the house called the Royal Wardrobe 
that night, but he went out again on horseback 
among the mob, and began trying to understand 



Richard II 143 

what they wanted. Wat Tyler, while talking, 
grew violent, forgot to whom he was speaking, and 
laid his hand on the king's bridle, as if to threaten 
or take him prisoner. Upon this, the Lord Mayor, 
with his mace — the large crowned staff that is 
carried before him — dealt the man such a blow 
that he fell from his horse, and an attendant thrust 
him through with a sword. The people wavered, 
and seemed not to know what to do: and the 
young king, with great readiness, rode forward 
and said — "Good fellows, have you lost your 
leader? This fellow was but a traitor, I am your 
king, and will be your captain and guide/' Then 
he rode at their head out into the fields, and the 
gentlemen, who had mustered their men by this 
time, were able to get between them and the city. 
The people of each county were desired to state 
their grievances ; the king engaged to do what he 
could for them, and they went home. 

Richard seems to have really wished to take 
away some of the laws that were so hard upon them, 
but his lords would not let him, and he had as yet 
very little power — being only a boy — and by the 
time he grew up his head was full of vanity and 
folly. He was very handsome, and he cared more 
for fine clothes and amusements than for business ; 



144 Young Folks History of England, 

and his youngest uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, 
did all he could to keep him back, and hinder him 
from taking his affairs into his own hands. Not 
till he was twenty-four did Richard begin to govern 
for himself ; and then the Duke of Gloucester was 
always grumbling and setting the people to grum- 
ble, because the king choose to have peace with 
France. Duke Thomas used to lament over the 
glories of the battles of Edward III., and tell the 
people they had taxes to pay to keep the king in 
ermine robes, and rings, and jewels, and to let him 
give feasts and tilting matches — when the knights, 
in beautiful, gorgeous armor, rode against one 
another in sham fight, and the king and ladies 
looked on and gave the prize. 

Now, Richard knew very well that all this did 
not cost half so much as his grandfather's wars, and 
he said it did not signify to the people what he 
wore, or how he amused himself, as long as he did 
not tax them and take their lambs and sheaves to 
pay for it. But the people would not believe him, 
and Gloucester was always stirring them up against 
him, and interfering with him in council. At last, 
Richard went as if on a visit to his uncle at Pleshy 
Castle, and there, in his own presence, caused him 
to be seized and sent off to Calais. In a few days' 



Biehard II 145 

time Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, was dead ; and 

to this day nobody knows whether his grief and 

rage brought on a fit, or if he was put to death. 

It is certain, at least, that Richard*;; other two 

uncles do not seem to have treated the king as if 

he had been to blame. The elder of these uncles, 

the Duke of Lancaster, was called John of Gaunt 

— because he had been born at Ghent, a town in 

Flanders. He was becoming an old man, and 

only tried to help the king and keep tilings quiet ; 

but Henry, his eldest son, was a fine high-spirited 

young man — a favorite with everybody, and was 

always putting himself forward — and the king was 

very much afraid of him. 

One day, when Parliament met, the king stood 

up, and commanded Henry of Lancaster to tell all 

those present what the Duke of Norfolk had said 

when they were riding together. Henry gave in a 

written paper, saying that the duke had told him 

that they should all be ruined, like the Duke of 

Gloucester, and that the king would find some way 

to destroy them. Norfolk angrily sprang up, and 

declared he had said no such tiling. In those 

days, when no one could tell which spoke truth, 

the two parties often would offer to fight, and it 

10 



146 Young Folks 1 History of England, 

was believed that God would show the right, by 
giving the victory to the sincere one. So Henry and 
Norfolk were to fight; but just as they were 
mounted on their horses, with their lances in their 
hands, the king threw down his staff before them, 
stopped the combat, and sentenced Norfolk to be 
banished from England for life, and Henry for ten 
years. 

Not long after Henry had gone, his old father — 
John of Gaunt — died, and the king kept all his 
great dukedom of Lancaster. Henry would not 
bear this, and knew that many people at home 
thought it very unfair ; so he came to England, and 
as soon as he landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire, 
people nocked to him so eagerly, that he began to 
think he could do more than make himself duke of 
Lancaster. King Richard was in Ireland, where 
his cousin, the governor — Roger Mortimer — had 
been killed by the wild Irish. He came home in 
haste on hearing of Henry's arrival, but everybody 
turned against him : and the Earl of Northumber- 
land, whom he had chiefly trusted, made him 
prisoner and carried him to Henry. He was taken 
to London, and there set before Parliament, to 
confess that he had ruled so ill that he was 



Richard II 



147 



unworthy to reign, and gave up the crown to his 
dear cousin Henry of Lancaster, in the year 1399. 
Then lie was sent away to Pontefract Castle, and 
what happened to him there nobody knows, but he 
never came out of it alive. 



S# 




CHAPTER XIX. 

HEXEY IV. 

a.d. 1390—1413. 

THE English people had often chosen their 
king out of the royal family in old times, 
but from John to Richard II., he had always been 
the son and heir of the last king. Now, though 
poor Richard had no child, Henry of Lancaster was 
not the next of kin to him, for Lionel, Duke of 
Clarence, had come between the Black Prince and 
John of Gaunt ; and his great grandson, Edmund 
Mortimer, was thought by many to have a better 
right to be king than Henry. Besides, people did 
not know whether Richard was alive, and they 
thought him hardly used, and wanted to set him 
free. So Henry had a very uneasy time. Every- 
one had been fond of him when he was a bright, 

J4S 



Henry IK 149 

friendly, free-spoken noble, and he had thought 
that he would be a good king and much loved ; but 
he had gained the crown in an evil way, and it 
never gave him any peace or joy. The Welsh, 
who always had loved Richard, took up arms for 
him, and the Earl of Northumberland, who had be- 
trayed Richard, expected a great deal too much 
from Henry. The earl had a brave son — Henry 
Percy — who was so fiery and eager that he was 
commonly called Hotspur. He was sent to fight 
with the Welsh : and with the king's son, Henry, 
Prince of Wales — a brave boy of fifteen or sixteen 
— under his charge, to teach him the art of war ; 
and they used to climb the mountains and sleep in 
tents together as good friends. 

But the Scots made an attack on England. 
Henry Percy went north to fight with them, and 
beat them in a great battle, making many prisoners. 
The King sent to ask to have the prisoners sent to 
London, and this made the proud Percy so angry 
that he gave up the cause of King Henry, and 
went off to Wales, taking his prisoners with him; 
and there — being by this time nearly sure that 
poor Richard must be dead — he joined the Welsh 
in choosing, as the only right king of England, 
young Edmund Mortimer. Henry IV, and his 



150 Young Folks* History of England. 

sons gathered an army easily — for the Welsh were 
so savage and cruel, that the English were sure to 
fight against them if they broke into England. 
The battle was fought near Shrewsbury. It was a 
very fierce one, and in it Hotspur was killed, the 
Welsh put to flight, and the Prince of Wales 
fought so well that everyone saw he was likely to 
be a brave, warlike king, like Edward I. or 
Edward III. 

The troubles were not over, however, for the 
Earl of Northumberland himself, and Archbishop 
Scrope of York, took up arms against the king ; 
but they were put down without a battle. The 
Earl fled and hid himself, but the archbishop was 
taken and beheaded — the first bishop whom a 
king of England had ever put to death. The 
Welsh went on plundering and doing harm, and 
Prince Henry had to be constantly on the watch 
against them ; and, in fact, there never was a reign 
so full of plots and conspiracies. The king never 
knew whom to trust : one friend after another 
turned against him, and he became soured and 
wretched: he was worn out with disappointment 
and guarding against everyone, and at last he grew 
even suspicious of his brave son Henry, because he 
was so bright and bold, and was so much loved. 



Hcnru IV. 151 

The prince was ordered home from Wales, and 
obliged to live at Windsor, with nothing to do, 
while his youngest brothers were put before him 
and trusted by their father — one of them even 
sent to command the army in France. But hap- 
pily the four brothers — Henry, Thomas, John and 
Humfrey — all loved each other so well that 
nothing could make them jealous or at enmity with 
one another. At Windsor, too, the king kept 
young Edmund Mortimer — whom the Welsh had 
tried to make king, — and also the young Prince 
'of Scotland, whom an English ship had caught as 
he was sailing for France to be educated. It was 
very dishonorable of the king to have taken him : 
but he was brought up with the young English 
princes, and they all led a happy life together. 

There are stories told of Henry — Prince Hal, as 
he was called — leading a wild, merry life, as a sort 
of madcap ; playing at being a robber, and break- 
ing into the wagons that were bringing treasure 
for his father, and then giving the money back 
again. Also, there is a story that, when one of his 
friends was taken before the Lord Chief Justice, he 
went and ordered him to be released, and that 
when the justice refused he drew his sword, upon 
which the justice sent him to prison ; and he went 



152 y rid. 

tly, knowi a was right. The ki g - - 

Ig who 

maintained the law so well, and a son who would 
submit to it : but - i to be g 

; and it seems 
that ; _ if was full of fun and frolic, 

anything really wn 
:i old man before his time. He 
Is, and oih 
came on when he was in Westminsi : A >ey. He 
a to the room called tht hain- 

I him there. Anotl 
the si I the kiL_ as if he w 

and the prince took the crown tha 
and carried it away. When the king rev 
Hem ght it back, with mar.; ses. •* Ah. 

f air ^ -1 the king, "wh : have y 

the crown ? you know your father had n 

try, -with your took 

1 with i will keep it." 

••V . have mercy on my soul," said the 

Another story tells how the prince, feeling that 

s Father doubted his loyalty, presented himself 

one :he king, and 

him a laggei . _ 1 his 




PRINCE HENRY OFFERS HIS LIFE TO HIS FATHER. 



1 55 

father to take his life, if he could no long 
and love him. 

We cannot be quite certain about the truth of 
conver for many people aviII write 

down stories they have heard, without making sure 
of them. One thing we ... I Eenry 

told his Bon, whi< .It 

was that, unl tade war in I his lords 

wo \d never let him h nuiet on his throi 

tnd; and this young TI nry was quil 
to believe. There had nev r been a real 
tween V. -land since Edward III. had 

:r — only truces, which are short 
in the middle of a great war — and the English 
were eager to begin again ; for people seldom 
thought then of the misery that -Teat 

war. but only of the honor and glory that were to 
be gai making prisoners and getting ransoms 

from them. 

So Henry IV. died, after havin his own 

life very miserable by taking the crown unjus 
and, as you will see, leaving a great dual of harm 
still to come to the whole country, as well i 
France. 

He died in the year 1399. His family is called 
the House of Lancaster, beeaUie hi.? father had 



156 Young Folks' Ristory of England. 

been Duke of Lancaster. You will be amused to 
hear that Richard Whittington really lived in his 
time. I cannot answer for his cat, but he was 
really Lord Mayor of London, and supplied the 
wardrobe of King Henry's daughter, when she 
married the King of Denmark. 




CHAPTER XX. 

HENRY V., OF MONMOUTH. 
A.D. 1413—1423. 

THE young King Henry was full of high, good 
thoughts. He was most devout in going to 
church, tried to make good Bishops, gave freely to 
the poor, and was so kindly, and hearty, and merry 
in all his words and ways, that everyone loved him. 
Still, he thought it was his duty to go and make 
war in France. He had been taught to believe the 
kingdom belonged to him, and it was in so 
wretched a state that he thought he could do it 
good. The poor king, Charles VI., was mad, and 
had a wicked wife besides; and his sons, and 
uncles, and cousins were always fighting, till the 
streets of Paris were often red with blood, and the 
whole country was miserable. Henry hoped to set 
all in order for them, and gathering an army 
157 



158 1 bung Folks* History of England. 

together, crossed to Normandy. lie called on the 
people to own him as their true king, and never let 
any h :rn be done to them, for he hung any soldier 
who was caught stealing, or misusing anyone. He 
took the town of Harfleur, on the coast of 
Normandy, but not till after a long siege, when his 
camp was in so wet a place that ther; was much 
illness among his men, The store of food was 
nearly used up, and he was obliged to march his 
troops across to Calais, which you know belonged 
to England, to get some more. But on the way 
the French army came up to meet him — a very 
grand, splendid-looking army, commanded by the 
king*s eldest son the dauphin. Just as the English 
kings' eldest son was always Prince of Wales, the 
French kings' eldest son was always called Dau- 
phin of Vienne, because Viennc, the country that 
belonged to him, had a dolphin on its shield. The 
French army was very large — quite twice the 
number of the English — but, though Henry's men 
were weary and half-starved, and many of them 
sick, they were not afraid, but believed their king 
when he told them that there were enough French- 
men to kill, enough to run away, and enough to 
make prisoners. At night, however, the English had 
solemn prayers, and made themselves ready, and 



Henry V. of Monmouth, 161 

the king walked from tent to tent to see that each 

man was in his place ; while, on the other hand, the 

French were feasting and revelling, and settling what 

they would do to the English when they had made 

them prisoners. They were close to a little village 

which the English called AgincOurt, and, though 

that is not quite its right name, it is what we have 

called the battle ever since. The French, owing 

to the quarrelsome state of the country, had no 

order or obedience among them. Nobody would 

obey any other; and when their own archers were 

ill the way, the horsemen began cutting them down 

as if they were the enemy. Some fought bravely, 

but it was of little use ; and by night all the French 

were routed, and King Henry's banner waving in 

victory over the field. He went back to England 

in great glory, and all the aldermen of London 

came out to meet him in red gowns and gold 

chains, and among them was Sir .Richard Wliit- 

tington, the great silk mercer. \y 

Henry was so modest that he would not allow 

the helmet he had worn at Agincou-i, all knocked 

about with terrible blows, to be carried before him 

when he rode into London, and he went straight to 

church, to give thanks to God for his victory. He 

soon went back to France, and went on conquering 

11 



162 Young Folks' History of England. 

it till the queen came to an agreement with him 
that he should marry her daughter Catherine, and 
that, though poor, crazy Charles VI. should reign 
to the end of his life, when he died Henry and 
Catherine should be king and queen of France. 
So Henry and Catherine were married, and he took 
her home to England with great joy and pomp, 
leaving his brother Thomas, Duke of Clarence, to 
take care of his army in France. For, of course, 
though the queen had made this treaty for her mad 
husband, most brave, honest Frenchmen could not 
but feel it a wicked and unfair thing to give the 
kingdom away from her son, the Dauphin Charles. 
He was not a good man, and had consented to the 
murder of his cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, and 
this had turned some against him ; but still he was 
badly treated, and the bravest Frenchmen could 
not bear to see their country given up to the 
English. So, though he took no trouble to fight 
for himself, they fought for him, and got some 
Scots to help them ; ami by and by news came to 
Henry that his army had been beaten, and his 
brother killed. 

He came back again in haste to France, and his 
presence made everything go well again ; but all 
the winter he was besieging the town of Meaux, 



Henry F., of Monmouth. 163 

where there was a very cruel robber, who made all 
the roads to Paris unsafe, and by the time he had 
taken it his health was much injured. His queen 
came to him, and they kept a very grand court at 
Paris, at Whitsuntide ; but soon after, when Henr}^ 
set out to join his army, he found himself so ill and 
weak that he was obliged to turn back to the 
Castle of Vincennes, where he grew much worse. 
He called for all his friends, and begged them to be 
faithful to his little baby son, whom he had never 
even seen ; and he spoke especially to his brother 
John, Duke of Bedford, to whom he left the 
charge of all he had gained. He had tried to be a 
good man, and though his attack on France was 
really wrong, and caused great misery, he had 
meant to do right. So he was not afraid to face 
death, and he died when only thirty-four years 
old, while he was listening to the 51st Psalm. 
Everybody grieved for him — even the French — 
and nobody had ever been so good and dutiful to 
poor old King Charles, who sat in a corner lament- 
ing for his good son Henry, and wasting away till 
he died, only three weeks later, so that he was 
buried the same day, at St. Denys Abbey, near 
Paris, as Henry was buried at Westminster Abbey, 
near London. 



CHAPTER XXL 

HENRY VI., OF WINDSOR. 
a.d. 1423—1461. 

THE poor little baby, Henry VI., was but nine 
months old when — over the grave of his 
father in England, and his grandfather in France — 
he was proclaimed King of France and England. 
The crown of. England was held over his head, and 
his lords made their oaths to him : and when he 
was nine years old he was sent to Paris, and there 
crowned King of France. He was a very good, 
little, gentle boy, as meek and obedient as. possible; 
but his friends, who knew that a king must be 
brave, strong, and firm for his people's sake, began 
to be afraid that nothing would ever make him 
manly. The war in Franco wen j on all the time : 
the Duke of Bedford keeping the north and the old 
lands in the south-west for little Henry, and the 

104 



Henry VI., of Windsor. 167 

French doing their best for their rightful king — 
though he was so lazy and fond of pleasure that he 
let them do it all alone. 

Yet a wonderful thing happened in his favor. 
The English were besieging Orleans, when a young 
village girl, named Joan of Arc, came to King 
Charles and told him that she had had a commission 
from Heaven to save Orleans, and to lead him to 
Rheims, where French kings were always crowned. 
And she did ! She always acted as one led by 
Heaven. Many wonderful things are told of her, 
and one circumstance that produced a great im- 
pression on the public mind was that when brought 
into the presence of Charles, whom she had never 
before seen, she recognized him, although he was 
dressed plainly, and one of the courtiers had on the 
royal apparel. She never let anything wrong be 
done in her sight — no bad words spoken, no 
savage deeds done ; and she never fought herself, 
only led the French soldiers. The English thought 
her a witch, and fled like sheep whenever they saw 
her ; and the French common men were always 
brave with her to lead them. And so she really 
saved Orleans, and brought the king to be crowned 
at Rheims. But neither Charles nor his selfish bad 
nobles liked her. She was too good for them ; and 



168 Young Folks 1 History of England. 

so, though they would not let her go home to her 
village as she wished, they gave her no proper help ; 
and once, when there was a fight going on outside 
the walls of a town, the French all ran away and 
left her outside, where she was taken by the 
English. And then, I grieve to say, the court that 
sat to judge her — some English and some French 
of the English party — sentenced her to be burnt 
to death in the market place at Rouen as a witch, 
and her own king never tried to save her. 

But the spirit she had stirred up never died 
away. The French went on winning back more 
and more ; and there were so many quarrels among 
the English that they had little chance of keeping 
anything. The king's youngest uncle, Humfrey, 
Duke of Gloucester, was always disputing with the 
Beaufort family. John of Gaunt, Duke of Lan- 
caster — father to Henry IV. — had, late in life, 
married a person of low birth, and her children 
were called Beaufort, after the castle where they 
were born — not Plantagenet — and were hardly 
reckoned as princes by other people ; but they were 
very proud, and thought themselves equal to any- 
body-. The good Duke of Bedford died quite 
worn out with trying to keep the peace among 
them, and to get proper help from England to save 



Henry FT., of Windsor. 169 

the lands his brother had won in France. All this 
time, the king liked the Beauforts much better 
than Duke Humfrey, and he followed their advice, 
and that of their friends, the Earl of Suffolk, in 
marrying Margaret of Anjou — the daughter of a 
French prince, who had a right to a great part of 
the lands the English held. Ail these were given 
back to her father, and this made the Duke of 
Gloucester aud all the English more angry, and 
they hated the young queen as the cause. She 
was as bold and high-spirited as the king was gentle 
and meek. He loved nothing so well as praying, 
praising God, and reading ; and he did one great 
thing for the country — which did more for it than 
all the fighting kings had done — he founded Eton 
College, close to Windsor Castle ; and there many 
of our best clergymen, and soldiers, and statesmen, 
have had their education. But while he was 
happy over rules for his scholars, and in plans for 
the beautiful chapel, the queen was eagerly taking 
part in the quarrels, and the nation hated her the 
more for interfering. And very strangely, Hum- 
frey, Duke of Gloucester, was, at the meeting of 
Parliament, accused of high treason and sent to 
prison, where, in a few days, he was found dead in 
his bed — just like his great-uncle, Thomas, Duke 



170 Young Folks' History of England. 

of Gloucester; nor does anyone understand the 
mystery in one case better than in the other, except 
that we are more sure that gentle Henry VI. had 
nothing to do with it than we can be of Richard II. 

These were very bad times. There was a rising 
like Wat Tyler's, under a man named Jack Cade, 
who held London for two or three days before he 
was put down; and, almost at the same time, the 
queen's first English friend, Suffolk, was exiled by 
her enemies, and taken at sea and murdered by 
some sailors. Moreover, the last of the brave old 
friends of Henry V. was killed in France, while 
trying to save the remains of the old duchy of 
Aquitaine, which had belonged to the English 
kings ever since Henry II. married Queen Eleanor. 
That was the end of the hundred years' war, for 
peace was made at last, and England kept nothing 
in France but the one city of Calais. \J 

Still things were growing worse. Duke Hum- 
frey left no children, and as time went on and the 
king had none, the question was who should reign. 
If the Beauforts were to be counted as princes, 
they came next , but eve^one hated them, so that 
people recollected that Henry IV. had thrust aside 
the young Edmund Mortimer, grandson to Lionel, 
who had been next eldest to the Black Prince. 



Henry IT., of Windsor. 171 

Edmund "was dead, but his sister Anne had married 
a son of the Duke of York, youngest son of 
Edward III. ; and her son Richard, Duke of York, 
could not help feeling that he had a much better 
right to be king than any Beaufort. There was a 
great English noble named Richard Nevil, Earl of 
Warwick, who liked to manage everything — just 
the sort of baron that w T as always mischievous at 
home, if not fighting in France — and he took up 
York's cause hotly. York's friends used to wear 
white roses, Beaufort's friends red roses, and the 
two parties kept on getting more bitter ; but as no 
one wished any ill to gentle King Henry — who, to 
make matters worse, sometimes had fits of madness, 
like his poor grandfather in France — they would 
hardly have fought it out in his lifetime, if he had 
not at last had a little son, who was born while he 
was so mad that he did not know of it. Then, 
when York found it was of no use to wait, he 
began to make Avar, backed up by Warwick, and, 
after much fighting, they made the king prisoner, 
and forced him to make an agreement that he 
should reign as long as he lived, but that after that 
Richard of York should be king, and his son 
Edward be only Duke of Lancaster. This made 
the queen furiously angry. She would not give 



172 Young Folks' History of England. 

up her son's rights, and she gathered a great army, 
with which she came suddenly on the Duke of 
York near Wakefield, and destroyed nearly his 
whole army. He was killed in the battle ; and his 
second son, Edmund, was met on Wakefield bridge 
and stabbed by Lord Clifford ; and Margaret had 
their heads set up over the gates of York, while 
she went on to London to free her husband. 

But Edward, York's eldest son, was a better 
captain than he, and far fiercer and more cruel. 
He made the war much more savage than it had 
been before ; and after beating the queen's friends 
at Mortimer's Cross, he hurried on to London, 
where the people — who had always been very fond 
of his father, and hated Queen Margaret — greeted 
him gladly. He was handsome and stately look- 
ing ; and though he was really cruel when offended, 
had easy, good-natured manners, and everyone in 
London was delighted to receive him and own him 
as king. But Llenry and Margaret were in the 
north with many friends, and he followed them 
thither to Towton Moor, where, in a snow storm, 
began the most cruel and savage battle of all the 
war. Edward gained the victory, and nobody was 
spared, or made prisoner — all were killed who 
could not flee. Poor Henry was hidden among his 



Henry FX, of Windsor. 



m 



friends, and Margaret went to seek help in 
Scotland and abroad, taking her son with her. 
Once she brought another army and fought at 
Hexham, but she was beaten again; and before 
long King Henry was discovered by his enemies, 
carried to London, and shut up a prisoner in the 
Tower. His reign is reckoned to have ended 
in 1461. 







r-p 



CHAPTER XXIL 

EDWARD IV. 

a.d. 1461—1483. 

HOUGH Edward IV. was made king, the 

wars of the Red and White Roses were not 

over yet- Queen Margaret and her friends were 

always trying to get help for poor King Henry. 

Edward had been so base and mean as to have him 

led into London, with his feet tied together under 

his horse, while men struck him on the face, and 

cried out, "Behold the traitor!" But Henry was 

meek, patient, and gentle throughout ; and, when 

ihut up in the Tower, spent his time in reading 

and praying, or playing with his little dog. 

Queen Margaret and her son -Edward were living 

with her father in France, and she was always 

trying to have her husband set free and brought 

back to his throne. In the meantime, all England 
174 



Edward IV. 175 

was exceedingly surprised to find that Edward IV. 
had been secretly married to a beautiful lady 
named Elizabeth Woodville — Lady Grey. Her 
first husband had been killed fighting for Henry, 
and she had stood under an oak tree, when King 
Edward was passing, to entreat that his lands 
might not be taken from her little boys. The king 
fell in love with her and married her, but for a 
long time he was afraid to tell the Earl of 
Warwick ; and when he did, Warwick was greatly 
offended — and all the more because Elizabeth's 
relations were proud and gay in their dress, and 
tried to set themselves above all the old nobles. 
Warwick himself had no son. but he had two 
daughters, whom he meant to marry to the king's 
two brothers — George, Duke of Clarence, and 
Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Edward thought 
this would make Warwick too powerful, and 
though he could not prevent George from marrying 
Isabel Nevil, the eldest daughter, the discontent 
grew so strong that Warwick persuaded George to 
fly with him, turn against his own brother, and 
offer Queen Margaret their help! No winder 
Margaret did not trust them, and was very hard to 
persuade that Warwick could mean well by her; 
but at last she consented, and sfave her sod 



176 Young Folks' History of England. 

Edward — a fine lad of sixteen — to marry his 
daughter, Anne Nevil ; after which, Warwick — 
whom men began to call the king-maker — went 
back to England with Clarence, to raise their men, 
while she was to follow with her son and his young 
wife. Warwick. came so suddenly that he took the 
Yorkists at unawares, Edward had to flee for his 
life to Flanders, leaving his wife and his babies to 
take shelter in \Yestminster Abbey — since no one 
durst take any one out of a holy place — and poor 
Henry was taken out of prison and set on the 
throne again. However, Edward soon got help in 
Flanders, where his sister was married to the Duke 
of Burgundy. He came back again, gathered his 
friends, and sent messages to his brother Clarence 
that he would forgive him if he would desert the 
earl. No one ever had less faith or honor than 
George of Clarence. He did desert Warwick, just 
as the battle of Barnet Heath was beginning ; and 
Warwick's king-making all ended, for he was 
killed, with his brother and many others, in the 
battle. 

And this was the first news that met Margaret 
when, after being long hindered by foul weather, 
she landed at Plymouth. She would have done 
more wisely to have gone back, but her son 




INTERVIEW BETWEEN EDWARD IV, AND LOUIS XI. 



Edward IV. 179 

Edward longed to strike a blow for his inheritance, 
and they had friends in Wales whom they hoped 
to meet. So they made their way into Glouces- 
tershire ; but there King Edward, with both lus 
brothers, came down upon them at Tewkesbury, 
and there their army was routed, and the young 
prince taken and killed — some say by the king him- 
self and his brothers. Poor broken hearted Queen 
Margaret was made prisoner too, and carried to the 
Tower, where she arrived a day or two after the 
meek and crazed captive, Henry VI., had been 
slain, that there might be no more risings in his 
name. And so ended the long war of York and 
Lancaster — though not in peace or joy to the 
savage, faithless family who had conquered. 

Edward was merry and good-natured when not 
angered, and had quite sense and ability enough to 
have been a ver}' good king, if he had not been 
lazy, selfish, and full of vices. He actually set 
out to conquer France, and then let himself be per- 
suaded over and paid off by the cunning King of 
France, and went home again, a laughing-stock to 
everybody. The two kings had an interview on a 
bridge over the River Somme in France, where 
they talked through a kind of fence, each being too 



180 Young Folks' History of England. 

suspicious of the other to meet, without such a 
barrier between them. As to George, the king 
had never trusted him since his shameful behavior 
when Warwick rebelled; besides, he was always 
abusing the queen's relations, and Richard was 
always telling the king of all the bad and foolish 
things he did or said. Ac last there was a great 
outbreak of anger, and the king ordered the Duke 
of Clarence to be imprisoned in the Tower; and 
there, before long, he too was killed.. The saying 
was that he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey 
wine, but this is not at all likely to be true. He 
left two little children, a boy and a girl. 

So much cruel slaughter had taken place, that 
most of the noble families in England had lost 
many sons, and a great deal of their wealth, and 
none of them ever became again so mighty as the 
king-maker had been. His daughter, Anne, the 
wife of poor Edward of Lancaster, was found by 
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, hidden as a cook- 
maid in London, and she was persuaded to marry 
him — as, indeed, she had always been intended 
for him. He was a little, thin, slight man, with 
one shoulder higher than the other, and keen, cun- 
ning dark eyes ; and as the king was very tall, with 



Edward IV. 181 

a handsome, blue-eyed, fair face, people laughed 
at the contrast, called Gloucester Richard Crook- 
back and were very much afraid of him. 

It was in this reign that books began to be 
printed in England instead of written. Printing 
had been found out in Germairy a little before, and 
books had been shown to Henry VI., but the 
troubles of his time kept him from attending to 
them. Now, however, Edward's sister, the Duchess 
of Burgundy, much encouraged a printer named 
Caxton, whose books she sent her brother, and 
Other presses were set up in London. Another 
great change had now come in. Long ago, in the 
time of Henry III., a monk named Roger Bacon 
had made gunpowder; but nobody used it much 
until, in the reign of Edward III., it was found out 
how cannon might be fired with it ; and some say 
it was first used in the battle of Crecy. But it was 
not till the reign of Edward IV. that smaller guns, 
such as each soldier could carry one of for himself, 
were invented — harquebuses, as they were called ; 
— and after this the whole way of fighting was 
gradually altered. Printing and gunpowder both 
made very great changes in everything, though not 
all at once. 



182 Young Folks' History of England, 

King Edward did not live to see the changes. 
He had hurt his health with his revellings and 
amusements, and died quite in middle age, in the 
year 1483: seeing, perhaps, at last, how much 
better a king he might have been. 




CHAPTER XXIII. 

EDWARD V. 
A.D. 1483. 

DWARD IV. left several daughters and two 
sons — Edward, Prince of Wales, who was 
fourteen years old, and Richard, Duke of York, 
who was eleven. Edward was at Ludlow Castle — 
where the princes of Wales were always brought 
up — with his mother's brother, Lord Rivers ; his 
half-brother, Richard Grey ; and other gentlemen. 

When the tidings came of his father's death, 
they set out to bring him to London to be crowned 
king. 

But, in the meantime, the Duke of Gloucester 
and several of the noblemen, especially the Duke 
of Buckingham, agreed that it was unbearable that 
the queen and her brothers should go on having all 
the power, as they had done in Edward's time. 
183 



184 Young Folks History of England. 

Till the king was old enough to govern, his father's 
brother, the Duke of Gloucester, was the proper 
person to rule for him, and they would soon put an 
end to the Woodvilles. The long wars had made 
everybody cruel and regardless of the laws, so that 
no one made much objection when Gloucester and 
Buckingham met the king and took him from his 
uncle and half-brother, who were sent off to Ponte- 
fract Castle, and in a short time their heads .were 
cut off there. Another of the late king's friends 
was Lord Hastings ; and as he sat at the council 
table in the Tower of London, with the other 
lords, Richard came in, and showing his own lean, 
shrunken arm, declared that Lord Hastings had 
bewitched him, and made it so. The other lords 
began to say that if he had done so it was horrible. 
But Richard would listen to no ifs, and said he 
would not dine till Hastings's head was off. And 
his cruel word was done. 

The queen saw that harm was intended, and 
went with all her other children to her former 
refuge in the sanctuary at Westminster ; nor would 
she leave it when her son Edward rode in state 
into London and was taken to the Tower, which 
was then a palace as well as a prison. 

The Duke of Gloucester and the Council said 



Edward V. 187 

that this pretence at fear wsls very foolish, and was 
only intended to do them harm, and that the little 
Duke of York ought to be with his brother ; and 
they sent the Archbishop of Canterbury to desire 
her to give the boy up. He found the queen sit- 
ting desolate, with all her long light hair streaming 
about her, and her children round her; and he 
spoke kindly to her at first, and tried to persuade 
her of what he really believed himself — -that it 
was all her foolish fears and fancies that the Duke 
of Gloucester could mean any ill to his little 
nephew, and that the two brothers ought to be 
together in his keeping. 

Elizabeth cried, and said that the boys were 
better apart, for they quarrelled when they were 
together, and that she could not give up little 
Richard. In truth, she guessed that their uncle 
wanted to get rid of them and to reign himself; 
and she knew that while she had Richard, Edward 
would be safe, since it would not make him king- 
to destroy one without the other. Archbishop 
Morton, who believed Richard's smooth words, and 
was a very good, kind man, thought this all a 
woman's nonsense, and told her that if she would 
not give up the boy freely, he would be taken from 
her by force. If she had been really a wise, brave 



188 Young Folks' History of England. 

mother, she would have gone to the Tower with 
her boy, as queen and mother, and watched over 
her children herself. But she had always been a 
silly, selfish woman, and she was afraid for herself. 
So she let the archbishop lead her child away, and 
only sat crying in the sanctuary instead of keeping 
sight of him. 

The next thing that happened was, that the 
Duke of Gloucester caused one Dr. Shaw to preach 
a sermon to the people of London in the open air, 
explaining that King Edward IV. had been a very 
bad man, and had never been properly married to 
Lady Grey, and so that she was no queen at all, 
and her children had no right to reign. The Lon- 
doners liked Gloucester and hated the Woodvilles, 
and all belonging to them, and after some sermons 
and speeches of this sort, there were so many people 
inclined to take as their king the man rather than 
the boy, that the Duke of Buckingham led a 
deputation to request Richard to accept the crown 
in his nephew's stead. lie met it as if the whole 
notion was quite new to him, but, of course, 
accepted the crown, sent for his wife, Anne Nevil, 
and her son, and was soon crowned as King 
Richard III. of England. 

As for the two boys, they were never seen out of 



Edward V. 189 

the Tower again. They were sent into the prison 
part of it, and nobody exactly knows what became 
of them there ; but there cannot be much doubt 
that they ninst have been murdered. Some years 
later, two men confessed that they had been 
employed to smother the two brothers with pillows, 
as they slept ; and though the}^ added some partic- 
ulars to the story that can hardly be believed, it is 
most likely that this was true. Full two hundred 
years later, a chest was found under a staircase, in 
what is called the White Tower, containing bones 
that evidently had belonged to boys of about 
fourteen and eleven years old ; and these were 
placed in a marble urn among the tombs of the 
kings in Westminster Abbey. But even to this 
day, there are some people who doubt whether 
Edward V. and Richard of York were really 
murdered, or if Richard were not a person who 
came back to England and tried to make himself 
king. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



RICHARD III. 



A.D. 1483—1485. 



RICHARD III. seems to have wished to be a 
good and great king ; but he had made his 
way to the throne in too evil a manner to be likely 
to prosper. How many people he had put to death 
we do not know, for when the English began to 
suspect tliat he had murdered his two nephews, 
they also accused him of the death of everyone who 
had been secretly slain ever since Edward IV. 
came to the throne, when he had been a mere boy. 
He found he must be always on the watch ; and 
his home was unhappy, for his son, for whose sake 
he had striven so hard to be king, died while yet 
a boy, and Anne, his wife, not long after. 

Then his former staunch friend, the Duke of 
Buckingham, began to feel that though he wanted 

the sons of Elizabeth Woodville to be set aside 
J 90 



Richard III. 191 

from reigning, it was quite another thing to 
murder them. He was a vain, proud man, who 
had a little royal blood — being descended from 
Thomas, the first Duke of Gloucester, son of 
Edward III. — and he bethought himself that, now 
all the House of Lancaster was gone, and so many 
of the House of York, he might possibly become 
king. But he had hardly begun to make a plot, 
before the keen-sighted, watchful Richard found it 
out, and had him seized and beheaded. 

There was another plot, though, that Richard 
did not find out in time. The real House of Lan- 
caster had ended when poor young Edward was 
killed at Tewkesbury; but the Beauforts — the 
children of that younger family of John of Gaunt, 
who had first begun the quarrel with the Duke of 
York — were not all dead. Lady Margaret Beau- 
fort, the daughter of the eldest son, had married a 
Welsh gentleman named Edmund Tudor, and had 
a son called Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. 
Edward IV. had always feared that this youth 
might rise against him, and he had been obliged to 
wander about in France and Brittany since the 
death of his father ; but nobody was afraid of Lady 
Margaret, and she had married a Yorkist nobleman, 
Lord Stanley. 



192 Young Folks' History of England. 

Now, the eldest daughter of Edward IV. — 
Elizabeth, or Lady Bessee, as she was called — 
was older than her poor young brothers ; and she 
heard, to her great horror, that her uncle wanted 
to commit the great wickedness of making her his 
wife, after poor Anne Nevil's death. There is a 
curious old set of verses, written by Lord Stanley's 
squire, which says that Lady Bessee called Lord 
Stanley to a secret room, and begged him to send 
to his stepson, Richmond, to invite him to come to 
England and set them all free. 

Stanley said he could not write well enough, and 
that he could not trust a scribe ; but Lady Bessee 
said she could write as well as any scribe in 
England. So she told him to come to her chamber 
at nine that evening, with his trusty squire ; and 
there she wrote letters, kneeling by the table, to all 
the noblemen likely to be discontented with 
Richard, and appointing a place of meeting with 
Stanley ; and she promised herself that, if Henry 
Tudor would come and overthrow the cruel tyrant 
Richard, she would marry him : and she sent him 
a ring in pledge of her promise. 

Henry was in Brittany when he received the 
letter. He kissed the ring, but waited long before 
he made up his mind to try his fortune. At last 




HENRY TUDOR CROWNED ON THE BATTLE-FIELD OF BOSWORTH. 



Richard III. 195 

he sailed in a French ship, and landed at Milforcl 
Haven — for he knew the Welsh would be de- 
lighted to see him ; and, as he was really descended 
from the great old British chiefs, they seemed to 
think that to make him king of England would be 
almost like having King Arthur back again. 

They gathered round him, and so did a great 
many English nobles and gentlemen. But Richard, 
though very angry, was not much alarmed, for he 
knew Henry Tudor had never seen a battle. He 
marched out to meet him, and a terrible fight took 
place at Redmore Heath, near Market Bosworth, 
where, after long and desperate struggling, Richard 
was overwhelmed and slain, his banner taken, and 
his men either killed or driven from the field. His 
body was found gashed, bleeding, and stripped ; 
and thus was thrown across a horse and carried into 
Leicester, where he had slept the night before. 

The crown he had worn over his helmet was 
picked up from the branches of a hawthorn, and 
set on the head of Henry Tudor. Richard was 
the last king of the Plantagenet family, who had 
ruled over England for more than three hundred 
years. This battle of Bosworth likewise finished 
the whole bloody war of the Red and White Roses. 







CHAPTER XXV. 



HENRY VII. 
a.d. 1485—1509. 

HENRY Tudor married the Lady Bessee as 
soon as lie came to London, and by this 
marriage the causes of the Red and White Roses 
were united ; so that he took for his badge a great 
rose — half red and half white. You may see it 
196 



Henry VII 197 

carved all over the beautiful chapel that he built 
on to Westminster Abbey to be buried in. 

He was not a very pjeasant person ; he was stiff, 
and cold, and dry, and very mean and covetous in 
some ways — though he liked to make a grand 
show, and dress all his court in cloth of gold and 
silver, and the very horses in velvet housings, 
whenever there was any state occasion. Nobody 
greatly cared for him ; but the whole country was 
so worn out with the troubles of the Wars of the 
Roses, that there was no desire to interfere with 
him ; and people only grumbled, and said he did 
not treat his gentle, beautiful wife Elizabeth as he 
ought to do, but was jealous of her being a king's 
daughter. There was one person who did hate 
him most bitterly, and that was the Duchess of 
Burgundy, the sister of Edward IV. and Richard 
III. : the same who, as I told you, encouraged 
printing so much. She felt as if a mean upstart 
had got into the place of her brothers, and his 
having married her niece did not make it seem a 
bit the better to her. There was one nephew left 
— the poor young orphan son of George, Duke of 
Clarence — but he had always been quite silly, and 
Henry VII. had him watched carefully, for fear 
some one should set him up to claim the crown. 



198 Young Folks' History of England. 

He was called Earl of Warwick, as heir to his 
grandfather, the king-maker. 

Suddenly, a young man came to Ireland and 
pretended to be this Earl of Warwick. He de- 
ceived a good many of the Irish, and the Mayor of 
Dublin actually took him to St. Patrick's Cathe- 
dral, where he was crowned as King Edward the 
Sixth : and then he was carried to the banquet upon 
an Irish chieftain's back. He came to England 
with some Irish followers, and some German 
soldiers hired by the duchess; and a few, but not 
many, English joined him. Henry met him at a 
village called Stoke, near Newark, and all his Ger- 
mans and Irish were killed, and he himself made 
prisoner. Then he confessed that he was really a 
baker's son, named Lambert Simnel ; and, as he 
turned out to be a poor weak lad, whom designing 
people had made to do just what they pleased, the 
king took him into bis kitchen as a scullion ; and, 
as he behaved well there, afterwards set him to 
look after the falcons, that people used to keep to 
go out with to catch partridges and herons. 

But after this, a young man appeared under the 
protection of the Duchess of Burgundy, who said 
he was no other than the poor little Duke of York, 
Richard, who had escaped from the Tower when 




CHAPEL AND TOMB OF HENRY VII. 



Henry VII 201 

his brother was murdered. Englishmen, wno came 
from Flanders, said that he was a clever, cowardly 
lad of the name of Peter (or Perkin) Warbeck, the 
son of a townsman of Tournay ; but the duchess 
persuaded King James IV. of Scotland to believe 
him a real royal Plantagenct. He went to Edin- 
burgh, married a beautiful lady, cousin to the king, 
and James led him into England at the head of an 
army to put forward his claim. But nobody 
would join him, and the Scots did not care about 
him ; so James sent him away to Ireland, whence 
lie went to Coin wall. However, lie soon found 
fighting was of no use, and fled away to the New 
Forest, where he was taken prisoner. He was set 
in the stocks, and there made to confess that he 
was really Perkin Warbeck and no duke, and then 
lie was shut up in the Tower. But there he made 
friends with the real Earl of Warwick, and persuad- 
ed him into a plan for escape ; but this was found 
out, and Henry, thinking that he should never 
have any peace or safety whilst either of them was 
alive, caused Perkin to be hanged, and poor 
innocent Edward of Warwick to be beheaded. 

It was thought that this cruel deed was done 
because Henry found that foreign kings did not 
think him safe upon the throne while one Plan- 



202 Young Folks' History of England. 

tagnet was left alive, and would not give their 
children in marriage to his sons and daughters. 
He was very anxious to make grand marriages for 
his children, and make peace with Scotland by 
a wedding between King James and his eldest 
daughter, Margaret. For his eldest son, Arthur, 
Prince of Wales, he obtained Katharine, the 
daughter of the King of Aragon and Qncen of 
Castille, and she was brought to England while 
both were mere children. Prince Arthur died 
when only eighteen years old; and King Henry 
then said that they had been both such children 
that they could not be considered as really married, 
and so that Katharine had better marry his next 
son, Hemy, although everyone knew that no mar- 
riage between a man and his brother's widow could 
be lawful. The truth was that he did not like to 
give up all the money and jewels she had brought ; 
and the matter remained in dispute for some years 
— nor was it settled when King Henry himself 
died, after an illness that no one expected would 
cause his death. Nobody was very sorry for him, 
for lie had been hard upon everyone, and had 
encouraged two wicked judges, named Dudley and 
Empson, who made people pay most unjust de- 






Henry VII. 203 

mands, and did everything to fill the king's treasury 
and make themselves rich at the same time. 

It was a time when many changes were going on 
peacefully. The great nobles had grown much 
poorer and less powerful ; and the country squires 
and chief people in the towns reckoned for much 
more in the State. Moreover, there was much 
learning and study going on everywhere. Greek 
began to be taught as well as Latin, and the New 
Testament was thus read in the language in which 
the apostles themselves wrote ; and that led people 
to think over some of the evil ways that had grown 
up in their churches and abbeys, during those long, 
grievous years, when no one thought of much but 
fighting, or of getting out of the way of the 
enemy. 

The king himself, and all his family, loved learn- 
ing, and nobody more than his son Henry, who — if 
his elder brother had lived— was to have been 
archbishop of Canterbury. 

It was in this reign, too, that America was 
discovered — though not by the English, but by 
Christopher Columbus, an Italian, who came out 
in ships that were lent to him by Isabel, the Queen 
of Spain, mother to Katharine, Princess of Wales. 



204 Young Folks' History of England. 

Henry had been very near sending Columbus, only 
he did not like spending so much money. How- 
ever, he afterwards did send out some ships, which 
discovered Newfoundland. Henry died in the 
year 1509, 




I §§^ 




CHAPTER XXVL 



HENRY VHX. AND CARDINAL WOLSEY. 



a.d. 1509—1529. 

THE new king was very fond of the Princess 
Katharine, and lie married her soon after 
his father's death, without asking any more ques- 
tions about the right or wrong of it. He began 
with very gallant and prosperous times. He was 

very handsome, and skilled in all sports and 
205 



206 Young Folks' History of Engl and. 

games, and had such frank, free manners, that the 
people felt as if they had one of their best old Plan- 
tagenets back again. They were pleased, too, when 
he quarreled with the King of France, and like an 
old Plantagenet, led an army across the sea and 
besieged the town of Tournay. Again, it was like 
the time of Edward III., for James IV. of Scotland 
was a friend of the French king, and came across 
the Border with all the strength of Scotland, to 
ravage England while Henry was away. But 
there were plenty of stout Englishmen left, and 
under the Earl of Surrey, they beat the Scots 
entirely at the battle of Flodclen field ; and King 
James himself was not taken, but left dead upon the 
field, while his kingdom went to his poor little baby 
son. Though there had been a battle in France it 
was not another Crecy, for the French ran away 
so fast that it was called the battle of the Spurs. 
However, Henry's expedition did not come to 
much, for he did not get all the help he was 
promised; and he made peace with the French 
king, giving him in marriage his beautiful } r oung 
sister Mary — though King Louis was an old, help- 
less, sickly man. Indeed, he only lived six weeks 
after the wedding, and before there was time to 
fetch Queen Mary home again, she had married a 



Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wohey. 207 

gentleman named Charles Brandon. She told her 
brother that she had married once to please him, 
and now she had married to please herself. But 
he forgave her, and made lier husband Duke of 
Suffolk. v 

Henry's chief adviser, at this time, was Thomas 
Wolsey, Archbishop of York ; a very able man, and 
of most splendid tastes and habits — outdoing even 
the Tudors in love of show. The pope had made 
him a cardinal — that is, one of the clergy, who 
are counted as parish priests in the diocese of 
Jtame, and therefore have a right to choose the 
pope. They wear scarlet hats, capes, and shoes, 
and are the highest in rank of all the clergy except 
the pope. Indeed, Cardinal Wolsey was in hopes 
of being chosen pope himself, and setting the 
whole Church to rights — for there had been several 
very wicked men reigning at Rome, one after the 
other, and they had brought tilings to such a pass 
that everyone felt there would be some great judg- 
ment from God if some improvement were not 
made. Most of Wolsey's arrangements with for- 
eign princes had this end in view. The new king 
of France, Francis I., was }~oung, brilliant and 
splendid, like Henry, and the two had a conference 
near Calais, when they brought their queens and 



208 Young Folks' History of England. 

their whole Court, and put up tents of velvet, silk, 
and gold — while everything was so extraordinarily 
magnificent, that the meeting has ever since been 
called the Field of the Cloth of Gold. 

However, nothing came of it all. Cardinal 
Wolsey thought Francis's enemy — the Emperor, 
Charles V. — more likely to help him to be pope, 
and make his master go over to that side ; but after 
all an Italian was chosen in his stead. And there 
came a new trouble in his way. The king and 
queen had been married a good many years, and 
they had only one child alive, and that was a girl, 
the Lady Mary — all the others had died as soon as 
they were born — and statesmen began to think 
that if there never was a son at all, there might be 
fresh wars when Henry died ; while others said 
that the loss of the children was to punish them 
for marrying unlawfully. Wolsey himself began 
to wish that the pope would say that it had never 
been a real marriage, and so set the king free to 
put Katharine away and take another wife — some 
grand princess abroad. This was thinking more of 
what seemed prudent than of the right; and it 
turned out ill for Wolsey and all besides, for no 
sooner had the notion of setting aside poor Katha- 
rine come into his mind, than the king cast his 




CARDINAL WOLSEY SERVED BY NOBLEMEN. 



Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey. 211 

eyes on Anne Boleyn, one of her maids of honor— 
a lively lady, who had been to France with his 
sister Mary. He was bent on marrying her, and 
insisted on the pope's giving sentence against Kath- 
arine. But the pope would not make any answer 
at all; first, because he was enquiring, and then 
because he could not well offend Katharine's 
nephew, the Emperor. Time went on, and the 
king grew more impatient, and at last a clergyman, 
named Thomas Cranmer, said that he might settle 
the matter by asking the learned men at the uni- 
versities whether it was lawful for a man to marry 
his brother's widow. " He has got the right sow 
by the ear,*' cried Henry, who was not choice in his 
words, and he determined that the universities 
should decide it. But Wolsey would not help the 
king here. He knew that the pope had been the 
only person to decide such questions all over the 
Western Church for many centuries ; and, besides, 
he had never intended to assist the king to lower 
himself by taking a wife like Anne Boleyn. But 
his secretary, Thomas Crura well, told the king all 
of Wolsey's disapproval, and between them they 
found out something that the cardinal had done by 
the king's own wish, but which did not agree with 
the old disused laws. He was put down from all 



212 Young Folks' History of England. 

his offices of state, and accused of treason against 
the king; but while he was being brought to 
London to be tried, he became so ill at the abbey 
at Leicester that he was forced to remain there, 
and in a few days he died, saying, sadly — "If I 
had served my God as I have served my king, He 
would not have forsaken me in my old age." 

With Cardinal Wolsey ended the first twenty 
years of Henry's reign, and all that had ever been 
good in it. 




;;cC §j 




CHAPTER XXVIL 



HENRY VIII. AND HIS WIVES. 



a.d. 1528 — 1541 



WHEN Henry VIII. had so ungratefully 
treated Cardinal Wolsey, there was no 
one to keep him in order. He would have no 
more to do with the pope, but said he was head of 
the Church of England himself, and could settle 
matters his own way. He really was a very 

21 3 



214 Youn j Folks' History of England. 

learned man, and had written a book to uphold 
the doctrines of the Church, which had caused the 
people to call Mm the Defender of the Faith. 
After the king's or queen's name on an English 
coin you may see F. D. — Fidel Defensor. This 
stands for that name in Latin. But Henry used 
his learning now against the pope. He declared 
that his marriage with Katharine was good for 
nothing, and sent her away to a house in Hunting- 
donshire, where, in three years' time, she pined 
away and died. In the meantime, he had married 
Anne Boleyn, taken Crumwell for his chief adviser, 
and had made Thomas Cranmer archbishop of Can- 
terbury. Then, calling himself head of the Church, 
he insisted that all his people should own him as 
such ; but the good ones knew that our Lord Jesus 
Christ is the only real Head of the Church, and 
they had learnt to believe that the pope is the 
father bishop of the west, though he had sometimes 
taken more power than he ought, and no king 
could ever be the same as a patriarch or father 
bishop. So they refused, and Henry cut off the 
heads of two of the best — Bishop Fisher and Sir 
Thomas More — though they had been his great 
friends. Sir Thomas More's good daughter Mar- 
garet, came and kissed him on his way to be 







PARTING OF SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS DAUGHTER, 



Henry VI1L and Ms Wives. 217 

executed j and afterwards, when his head was 
placed on a spike on London Bridge, she came by 
night in a boat and took it home in her arms. 

There were many people, however, who were 
glad to break with the pope, because so much had 
gone amiss in the Church, and they wanted to set 
it to rights. There was so much more reading, 
now that printing had been invented, that many 
persons could read who had never learnt Latin, 
and so a translation of the Bible was to be made 
for them : and there was a great desire that the 
Church Services — many of winch had also been in 
Latin — should likewise be put into English, and 
the litany was first translated, but no more at 
present. The king and Crumwell had taken it 
upon them to go on with what had been begun in 
Wolsey's time — the looking into the state of all 
the monasteries. Some were found going on badly, 
and the messengers took care to make the worst of 
everything. So all the worst houses were broken 
up, and the monks sent to their homes, with a 
small payment to maintain them for the rest of 
their lives. 

As to the lands that good men of old had given 
to keep up the convents, that God might be praised 
there, Henry made gifts of them to the lords about 



218 Young Folks History of England* 

Court. Whoever chose to ask for an abbey could 
get it, from the king's good nature ; and, as they 
wanted more and more, Henry went on breaking 
up the monasteries, till the whole of them were 
gone. A good deal of their riches he kept for him- 
self, and two new bishoprics Avere endowed from 
their spoils, but most of them were bestowed on 
the courtiers. The king, however, did not at all 
intend to change the teaching of the Church, and 
whenever a person was detected in teaching any 
thing contrary to her doctrines, as they were at 
that time understood, he was tried by a court of 
clergymen and lawyers before the bishop, and, if 
convicted, was — according to the cruel custom of 
those times — burnt to death at a stake in the 
market place of the next town. 

Meantime, the new queen, Anne Boleyn, whom 
the king had married privately in May, 1533, had 
not prospered. She had one little daughter, named 
Elizabeth, and a son, who died ; and then the king- 
began to admire one of her ladies, named Jane 
Seymour. Seeing this Anne's enemies either 
invented stories against her, or made the worst of 
some foolish, unlady-like, and unqueen-like things 
she had said and done, so that the king thought 
she wished for his death. She was accused of high 



Henry VIIL and his Wives. 219 

treason, sentenced to death, and beheaded: thus 
paying a heavy price for the harm she had done 
good Queen Katharine. 

The king, directly after, married Jane Seymour; 
but she lived only a very short time, dying 
immediately after the christening of her first son, 
who was named Edward. 

Then the king was persuaded by Lord Crumwell 
to many a foreign princess called Anne of Cleves. 
A great painter was sent to bring her picture, and 
made her very beautiful in it; but when she 
arrived, she proved to be not only plain-featured 
but large and clumsy, and the king could not bear 
the sight of her, and said they had sent him a great 
Flanders mare by way of queen. So he made 
Cranmer find some foolish excuse for breaking this 
marriage also, and was so angry with Thomas 
Crumwell for having led him into it, that this 
favorite was in his turn thrown into prison and be- 
headed. 

The king chose another English wife, named 
Katharine Howard ; but, after he had married her, 
it was found out that- she had been very ill brought 
up, and the bad people with whom she had been 
left came and accused her of the evil into which 
they Lad led her. So the king cut off her head 



E 

likewise, and then wanted to mid another wife ; 
but no foreign princess would take a husband who 
had put away two wives and beheaded two more, 
and i lian lady actually answered that she 

was much obliged to him. but she could not 
venture to many him. because she had only one 
neck. 

A: last lie found an English widow. Lady 
Latimer, whose maiden name was Katharine Parr, 
and married her. He was - 1 now, lame with 

gout, and very L ; and she nursed him 

kindly, and being a good-natured woman, persuad- 
ed him to be kinder to his daughters. Mary and 
Elizabeth, than he had ever been since the disgrace 
ol their mothers : and she did her best to keep him 
in good humor, but he went on doing eruel things, 
even to the end of his life ; and. at the very last, 
had in prison the very same Duke of Norfolk who 
had won the battle of Flodden. and would have 
put him to death in a few days' time, only that his 
own death prevented it. 

Yet. strange to say. Henry VIII. was not hated 
as might have been expected. His cruelties were 
chiefly to the nobles, not to the common people : 
and he would do good-natured things, and speak 
with a frank, open manner, that was much liked. 






Henry VIII. and his Wives. 



221 



England was prosperous, too, and shopkeepers, 
farmers, and all were well off; there was plenty of 
bread and meat for all, and the foreign nations 
were afraid to go to war with us. So the English 
people, on the whole, loved " Bluff King Hal," as 
they called him, and did not think much about his 
many wickednesses, or care how many heads he 
cut off. lie died in the year lo47. The changes 
in his time are generally called the beginning of 
the Reformation. 




CHAPTER XXVIII. 

EDWARD VI. 

A.d. 1547—1553. 

THE little son of Henry VIII. and Jane Sey- 
mour of course reigned after him as Edward 
VI. He was a quiet, gentle boy, exceedingly fond 
of learning and study, and there were great expec- 
tations of him ; but, as he was only nine years old, 
the affairs of state were managed by his council. 

The chief of the council were his two uncles — 
his mother's brothers, Edward and Thomas Sey- 
mour, the elder of whom had been made Duke of 
Somerset — together with Archbishop Cranmer ; 
but it was not long before the duke quarreled 
with his brother Thomas, put him into the Tower, 
and cut off his head, so that it seemed as if the sad 
days of Henry VIII. were not yet oyer. 

The Duke of Somerset and Archbishop Cranmer 
wanted to make many more changes in the Church 

222 



■ Edward VI. 223 

of England than Henry VITI. had ever allowed. 
They had all the Prayer-book Services translated 
into English, leaving out such parts as they did not 
approve ; the Lessons were read from the English 
Bible, and people were greatly delighted at being 
able to worship and to listen to God's Word in 
their own tongue. The first day on which the 
English Prayer-book was used was the Whitsunday 
of 1548. The Bibles were chained to the desks as 
being so precious and valuable ; and crowds would 
stand, or sit, and listen for hours together to any 
one who would read to them, without caring if he 
were a clergyman or not ; and men who tried to 
explain, without being properly taught, often made 
great mistakes. 

Indeed, in Germany and France a great deal of 
the same kind had been going on for some time 
past, though not with any sort of leave from the 
kings or bishops, as there was in England, and 
thus the reformers there broke quite off from the 
Church, and fancied they could do without bishops. 
This great break was called the Reformation, 
because it professed to set matters of religion to 
rights ; and in Germany the reformers called them- 
selves Protestants, because they protested against 
some of the teachings of the Church of Rome. 



224 Young Folk:/ History of England. 

Cranmer had at one time been in German}*, and 
had made friends with some of these German and 
Swiss Protestants, and he invited them to England 
to consult and help him and his friends. Several 
of them came, and they found fault with our old 
English Prayer-book — though it had never been 
the same as the Roman one — and it was altered 
again to please them and their friends, and brought 
out as King Edward's second book. Indeed, they 
tried to persuade the English to be like themselves 
— with very few services, no ornaments in the 
churches, and no bishops ; and things seemed to be 
tending more and more to what they desired, for 
the king was too young not to do what his tutors 
and governors wished, and his uncle and Cranmer 
w r ere all on their side. 

However, there was another great nobleman, the 
Duke of Northumberland, who wanted to be as 
powerful as the Duke of Somerset. He was the 
son of Dudley, the wicked judge under Henry 
VII., who had made himself so rich, and he man- 
aged to take advantage of the people being discon- 
tented with Somerset to get the king into his own 
hands, accuse Somerset of treason, send him to the 
Tower, and cut off his head 

The king at this time was sixteen. He had 




EDWARD VI. WRITING HIS JOURNAL. 



Edward VL 227 

never been strong, and he had learnt and worked 
much more than was good for him. He wrote a 
journal, and though he never says he grieved for 
his uncles, most likely he did, for he had few near 
him who really loved or cared for him, and he was 
fast falling into a decline, so that it became quite 
plain that he was not likely ever to be a grown-up 
king. There was a great difficulty as to who was 
to reign after him. The natural person would 
have been his eldest sister, Mary, but King Henry 
had forbidden her and Elizabeth to be spoken of 
as princesses or heiresses of the crown ; and, be- 
sides, Mary held so firmly to the Church, as she 
had learnt to believe in it in her youth, that the 
reformers knew she would undo all their work. 

There was a little Scottish girl, also named Mary 
— the grand-daughter of Margaret, eldest daughter 
of Henry VII. Poor child, she had been a queen 
from babyhood, for her father had died of grief 
when she was but a week old; and there had been 
some notion of marrying her to King Edward, and 
so ending the Avars, but the Scots did not like this, 
and sent her away to be married to the Dauphin, 
Francois, eldest son of the king of France. If 
Edward's sisters were not to reign, she came next; 
but the English would not have borne to be joined 



228 Young Folks History of England. 

on to the French; and there were the grand- 
daughters of Mary, that other sister of Henry 
VIII., who were thorough Englishwomen. Lady 
Jane Grey, the eldest of them, was a good, sweet, 
pious, and diligent girl of fifteen, wonderfully 
learned. But it was not for that reason, only for 
the sake of the royal blood, that the Duke of 
Northumberland asked her in marriage for his son, 
Guildford Dudley. When they were married, the 
duke and Oranmer began to persuade the poor, 
sick, young king that it was his duty to leave lib 
crown away from his sister Mary to Lady Jane, 
who would go on with the Reformation, while 
Mary would try to overthrow it. In truth, young 
Edward had no right to will away the crown ; but 
ho was only sixteen, and could only trust to what 
the archbishop and his council told him So he 
signed the parchment they brought him, and after 
that he quickly grew worse. 

The people grew afraid that Northumberland 
was shutting him up and misusing him, and once 
he came to the window of his palace and looked 
out at them, to show he was alive; but he died 
only a fortnight later, and we cannot guess what 
he would have been when he was grown up. 




CHAPTER XXIX. 



MARY I. 



a.d. 155:3 — 155S. 



THE Duke of Northumberland kept king 
Edward's death a secret till he had pro- 
claimed Jane queen of England. The poor girl 
knew that a great wrong was being done in her 
name. She wept bitterly, and begged that she 
might not be forced to accept the crown ; but she' 
229 



230 Young Folks' History of England. 

could do nothing to prevent it, when her father 
and husband, and his father, all were Lent on 
making her obey them ; and so she had to sit as a 
queen in the royal apartments in the Tower of 
London. 

But as soon as the news reached Mary, she set 
off riding towards London ; and, as everyone knew 
her to be the right queen, and no one would be 
tricked by Dudley, the whole of the people joined 
her, and even Northumberland was obliged to 
throw up his hat and cry " God save Queen Mary." 
Jane and her husband were safely kept, but Mary 
meant no harm by them if their friends would have 
been quiet. However, the people became discon- 
tented when Mary began to have the Latin service 
used again, and put Archbishop Cranmer in prison 
.for having favored Jane. She showed in every 
way that she thought all her brothers advisers had 
done very wrong. She wanted to be under the 
Pope again, and she engaged herself to marry the 
King of Spain, her cousin, Philip II. This was 
very foolish of her, for she was a middle-aged 
woman, pale, and low-spirited ; and he was much 
younger, and of a silent, gloomy temper, so that 
everyone was afraid of him. All her best friends 
advised her not, and the English hated the notion 



Mary I. 233 

so much, that the little children played at the 
queen's wedding in their games, and always ended 
by pretending to hang the King of Spain, North- 
umberland thought this discontent gave another 
chance for his plan, and tried to raise the people in 
favor of Jane ; but so few joined him that Mary 
very soon put them down, and beheaded North- 
umberland. She thought, too, that the quiet of 
the country would never be secure while Jane 
lived, and so she consented to her being put to 
death. Jane behaved with beautiful firmness and 
patience. Her husband was led out first and 
beheaded, and then she followed. She was most 
good and innocent in herself, and it was for the 
faults of others that khe suffered. Mary's sister, 
Elizabeth, was suspected, and sent to the Tower. 
She came in a boat on the Thames to the Traitor's 
Gate ; but, when she found where she was, she sat 
down on the stone steps, and said, " This is a place 
for traitors, and I am none." After a time she 
was allowed to live in the country, but closely 
watched. 

Philip of Spain came and was married to Mary. 
She was very fond of him, but he was not very 
kind to her, and he had too much to do in his other 
kingdoms to spend much time with her, so that she 



234 Young Folks' History of England. 

was always pining after him. Her great wish in 
choosing him was to be helped in bringing the 
country back to the old obedience to the Pope ; 
and she succeeded in having the English Church 
reconciled, and received again to communion with 
Rome. The new service she would under no con- 
sideration have established in her house. This 
displeased many of her subjects exceedingly. 
They thought they should be forbidden to read the 
Bible — they could not endure the Latin service^ 
and those who had been taught by the foreigners 
fancied that all proper reverence and beauty in 
church was a sort of idolatry. Some fled away 
into Holland and Germany, and others, who staid, 
and taught loudly against the doctrines that were 
to be brought back again, were seized and thrown 
into prison. 

Those bishops who had been foremost in the 
changes of course were the first to be tried for 
their teaching. The punishment was the dreadful 
one of being burnt alive, chained to a stake. 
Bishop Hooper died in this way at Gloucester, and 
Bishop Ridley and Bishop Latimer were both 
burnt at the same time at Oxford, encouraging one 
another to die bravely as martyrs for the truth, as 
they held it. Cranmer was in prison already for 



Mary L 235 

supporting Jane Grey, and he was condemned .to 
death ; but he was led to expect that he would be 
spared the fire if he would allow that the old faith, 
as Rome held it, was the right one. Paper after 
paper was brought, such as would please the queen 
and his judges, and he signed them all ; but after 
all, it turned out that none would do, and that he 
was to be burnt in spite of them. Then he felt 
what a base part he had acted, and was ashamed 
when he thought how bravely his brethren had 
died on the same spot: and when he was chained 
to the stake and the fire lighted, lie held his right 
hand over the flame to be burnt first, because it 
had signed what he did not really believe, and he 
cried out, u This unworthy hand ! * ? 

Altogether, about three hundred people were 
burnt in Queen Mary's reign for denying one or 
other of the doctrines that the Pope thought the 
right ones. It was a terrible time ; and the queen, 
who had only longed to do right and restore her 
country to the Church, found herself hated and 
disliked by everyone. Even the Pope, who had a 
quarrel with her husband, did not treat her warmly ; 
and the nobles, who had taken possession of the 
abbey lands, were determined never to let her 
restore them. Her husband did not love her, or 



236 Young Folks' History of England. 

like England. However, he persuaded her to help 
him in a war with the French, with which England 
ought to have had nothing to do, and the conse- 
quence was that a brave French duke took the city 
of Calais, the very last possession of the English in 
France. Mary was so exceedingly grieved, that 
she said that when she died the name of Calais 
would be found written on her heart. 

She was already ill, and there was a bad fever at 
the time, of which many of those she most loved 
and trusted had fallen sick. She died, in 1558, a 
melancholy and sorrowful woman, after reigning 
only five years. 





CHAPTER XXX. 



ELIZABETH. 



a.d. 1558— 15S7. 



\ LL through Queen Mary's time, her sister 
-*■ *■ Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn's daughter, had 
been in trouble. Those who held by Queen Mary, 
and maintained Henry's first marriage, said that 
his wedding with Anne was no real one, and so 
that Elizabeth ought not to reign ; but then there 
was no one else to take in her stead, except the 
237 



238 Young Folks' History of England. 

young Queen Mary of Scotland, wife to the French 
dauphin. All who wished for the Reformation, 
and dreaded Mary's persecutions had hoped to see 
Elizabeth queen, and this had made Mary much 
afraid of her ; and she was so closely watched and. 
guarded that once she even said she wished she 
was a milkmaid, to be left in peace. While she 
had been in the Tower she had made friends with 
another prisoner, Robert Dudley, brother to the 
husband of Lady Jane Grey, and she continued to 
like him better than any other person as long as 
he lived. 

When Mary died, Elizabeth was twenty-five, and 
the English were mostly willing to have her for their 
queen. She had read, thought, and learnt a great 
deal ; and she took care to have the advice of wise 
men, especially of the great Thomas Cecil, whom 
she made Lord Burleigh, and kept as her adviser 
as long as he lived. She did not always follow 
even his advice, however ; but, whenever she did, 
it was the better for her. She knew Robert 
Dudley was not wise, so, though she was so fond 
of him, she never let him manage her affairs for 
her. She would have wished to marry him, but 
she knew her subjects would think this disgraceful, 
so she only made him Earl of Leicester: and her 



Elizabeth. 239 

liking for him prevented her from ever bringing 
herself to accept any of the foreign princes who 
were always making proposals to her. Unfortu- 
nately he was not a good man, and did not make a 
good use of her favor, and he was much disliked 
by all the queen's best friends. 

She was very fond of making stately journeys 
through the country. All the poor people ran to 
see her and admire her ; but the noblemen who had 
to entertain her were almost ruined, she brought 
so many people who ate so much, and she expected 
such presents. These journeys were called Pro- 
gresses. The most famous was to Lord Leicester's 
castle of Kenil worth, but he could quite afford it. 
He kept the clock's hands at twelve o'clock all the 
time, that it might always seem to be dinner time ! 

Elizabeth wanted to keep the English Church a 
pure and true branch of the Church, free of the 
mistakes that had crept in before her father's time. 
So she restored the English Prayer-book, and can- 
celled all that Mary had done ; the people who had 
gone into exile returned, and all the Protestants 
abroad reckoned her as on their side. But, on the 
other hand, the Pope would not regard her as 
queen at all, and cut her and her country off from 
the Church, while Mary of Scotland and her 



240 Young Folks' History of England, 

husband called themselves the true queen and king 
of England ; and such of the English as believed 
the Pope to have the first right over the Church, 
held with him and Mary of Scotland. They were 
called Roman Catholics, while Elizabeth and her 
friends were the real Catholics, for they held with 
the Church Universal of old : and it was the Pope 
who had broken off with them for not accepting his 
doctrines, not they with the Pope. The English 
who had lived abroad in Mary's time wanted to 
have much more altered, and to have churches and 
services much less beautiful and more plain than 
they were. But Elizabeth never would consent to 
this ; and these people called themselves Puritans, 
and continued to object to the Episcopal form of 
worship. ^ 

Mary of Scotland was two years queen of France, 
and then her husband died, and she had to come 
back to Scotland. There most of the people had 
taken up doctrines that made them hate- the 
►sight of the clergy and services she had brought 
home from France ; they called her an idolater, and 
would hardly bear that she should hear the old 
service in her own chapel. She was one of the 
most beautiful and charming women who ever 
lived, and if she had been as true and good as she 




MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. 



Elizabeth. 243 

was lovely, nobody could have done more good; 
but the court of France at that time was a wicked 
place, and she had learnt much of the wickedness. 
She married a young nobleman named Henry 
Stuart, a cousin of her own, but he turned out 
foolish, selfish, and head-strong, and made her 
miserable ; indeed, he helped to kill her secretary 
in her own bedroom before her eyes. She hated 
him so much at last, that there is only too much 
reason to fear that she knew of the plot, laid by 
some of her lords, to blow the poor man's house up 
with gunpowder, while he lay in his bed ill of 
smallpox. At any rate, she very soon married one 
of the very worst of the nobles who had committed 
the murder. Her subjects could not bear this, and 
they rose against her and made her prisoner, while 
her husband fled the country They shut her up 
in a castle in the middle of a lake, and obliged her 
to give up her crown to her little son, James YI. 
— a baby not a year old. However, her sweet 
words persuaded a boy who waited on her to s1;eal 
the keys, and row her across the lake, and she was 
soon at the head of an army of her Roman 
Catholic subjects. They were defeated, however, 
and she found no place safe. for her in Scotland, so 
she fled across the Border to England. Queen 



244 Young Folks' History of England. 

Elizabeth hardly knew what to do. She believed 
that Mary had really had to do with Henry 
Stuart's death, but she could not bear to make 
such a crime known in a cousin and queen ; and 
what made it all more difficult to judge was, that 
the kings of France and Spain, and all the Roman 
Catholics at home, thought Mary ought to be queen 
instead of ^Elizabeth, and she might have been set 
up against England if she had gone abroad, or 
been left at large, while in Scotland she would 
have been murdered. The end of it was, that 
Elizabeth kept her shut up in different castles. 
There she managed to interest the English Roman 
Catholics in her, and get them to lay plots, which 
always were found out. Then the nobles were put to 
death, and Mary was more closely watched. This 
went on for nineteen years, and at last a worse plot 
than all was found out — for actually killing Queen 
Elizabeth. Her servants did not act honorably, for 
when they found out what was going on they 
pretended not to know, so that Mary might go on 
writing worse and worse things, and then, at last, 
the whole was made known. Mary was tried and 
sentenced to death, but Elizabeth was a long time 
making up her mind to sign the order for her 



Elizabeth, 245 

execution, and at last punished the clerks who sent 
it off, as if it had been their fault. 

So Queen Mary of Scotland was beheaded at 
Fotheringay Castle, showing much bravery and 
piety. There are many people who still believe 
that she was really innocent of all that she was 
accused of, and that she only was ruined by the 
plots that were laid against her. 



'&Dvm& 




CHAPTER XXXI. 



ELIZABETH S EEIGN. 



a.d. 15S7— 160: 



NO reign ever was more glorious or better for 
the people than Queen Elizabeth's. It was 
a time when there were many very great men 
living — soldiers, sailors, writers, poets — and they 
all loved and looked up to the queen as the mother 
of her country. There really was nothing she did 
246 



Elizabeth' s Reign, - 247 

love like the good of her people, and somehow they 
all felt and knew it, and " Good Queen Bess " had 
their hearts — though she was not always right, 
and had some very serious faults. 

The worst of her faults was not telling truth. 
Somehow kings and rulers had, at that time, learnt 
to believe that when they were dealing with other 
countries anything was fair, and that it was not 
wrong to tell falsehoods to hide a secret, nor to 
make promises they never meant to keep. People 
used to do so who would never have told a lie on 
their own account to their neighbor, and Lord 
Burleigh and Queen Elizabeth did so very often, 
and often behaved meanly and shabbily to people 
who had trusted to their promises. Her other 
fault was vanity. She was a little woman, with 
bright eye3, and rather hooked nose, and sandy 
hair, but she managed to look every inch a queen, 
and her eye, when displeased, was like a lion's. 
She had really been in love with Lord Leicester, 
and every now and then he hoped she would marry 
him ; indeed, there is reason to fear that he had his 
wife secretly killed, in order that he might be able 
to wed the queen ; but she saw that the people 
would not allow her to do so, and gave it up. But 
she liked to be courted. She allowed foreign 



£48 Young Folks History of England. 

princes to send her their portraits, .rings, and 
jewels, and sometimes to come and see her, but she 
never made up her mind to take them. And as to 
the gentlemen at her own court, she liked them to 
make the most absurd and ridiculous compliments 
to her, calling her their sun and goddess, and her 
hair golden beams of the morning, and the like ; 
and the older she grew the more of these fine 
speeches she required of them. Her dress — a 
huge hoop, a tall ruff all over lace, and jewels in 
the utmost profusion — was as splendid as it could 
be made, and in wonderful variety. She is said to 
have had three hundred gowns and thirty wigs. 
Lord Burleigh said of her that she was sometimes 
more than a man, and sometimes less than a woman. 
And so she was, when she did not like her ladies to 
wear handsome dresses. 

One of the people who had wanted to many her 
was her brother-in-law, Philip of Spain, but she was 
far too wise, and he and she were bitter enemies all 
the rest of their lives. His subjects in Holland had 
become Protestants, and he persecuted them so 
harshly that they broke away from him. They 
wanted Elizabeth to be their queen, but she would 
not, though she sent Lord Leicester to help them 
with an army. With him went his nephew, Sir 



Elizabeth's Reign. 249 

Philip Sydney, the most good, and learned, and 
graceful gentleman at court. There was great 
grief when Sir Philip was struck by a cannon ball 
in the thigh, and died after nine days pain. It 
was as he was being carried from the field, faint 
and thirsty, that some one had just brought him a 
cup of water, when he saw a poor soldier, worse 
hurt than himself, looking at it with longing eyes. 
He put it from him untasted, and said, " Take it, 
thy necessity is greater than mine." 

After the execution of Mary of Scotland, Philip 
of Spain resolved to punish Elizabeth and the 
English, and force them back to obedience to the 
pope. He fitted out an immense fleet, and filled 
it with fighting men. So strong was it that, as 
armada is the Spanish for a fleet, it was called the 
Invincible Armada. It sailed for England, the 
men expecting to burn and ruin all before them. 
But the English ships were ready. Little as they 
were, they hunted and tormented the big Spaniards 
all the way up the English Channel ; and, just as 
the Armada had passed the Straits of Dover, there 
came on such dreadful storms that the ships were 
driven and broken before it, and wrecked all round 
the coasts — even in Scotland and Ireland — and 
very few ever reached home again. The English 



250 Young Folks' History of England. 

felt that God had protected them with His wind 
and storm, and had fought for them. 

Lord Leicester died not long after, and the 
queen became almost equally fond of his stepson, 
the Earl of Essex, who was a brave, high-spirited 
young man, only too proud. 

The sailors of Queen Elizabeth's time were some 
of the bravest and most skilful that ever lived. 
Sir Francis Drake sailed round the world in the 
good ship Pelican, and when he brought her into 
the Thames the queen went to look at her. Sir 
Walter Raleigh was another great sailor, and a 
most courtly gentleman besides. He took out the 
first English settlers to North America, and named 
their new home Virginia — after the virgin queen 
— and he brought home from South America our 
good friend the potato root; and, also, he learnt 
there to smoke tobacco. The first time his servant 
saw this clone in England, he thought his master 
must be on fire, and threw a bucket of water over 
him to put it out. 

The queen valued these brave men much, but 
she liked none so well as Lord Essex, till at last he 
displeased her, and she sent him to govern Ireland. 
There he fell into difficulties, and she wrote angry 
letters, which made him think his enemies were 



Elizabeth' a Reign. 251 

setting her against him. So he cams back without 
leave ; and one morning came straight into her 
dressing chamber, where she was sitting, with her 
thin grey hair being combed, before she put on one 
of her thirty wigs, or painted her face. She was 
very angry, and would not forgive him, and he got 
into a rage, too ; and she heard he had said she 
was an old woman, crooked in temper as in person. 
What was far worse, he raised the Londoners to 
break out in a tumult to uphold him. He was 
taken and sent to the Tower, tried for treason, and 
found guilty of death. But the queen still loved 
him, and waited and waited for some message or 
token to ask her pardon. None came, and she 
thought he was too proud to beg for mercy. She 
signed the death warrant, and Essex died on the 
block. But soon she found that he had really sent 
a ring she once had given him, to a lady who was 
to show it to her, in token that he craved her 
pardon. The ring had been taken by mistake to a 
cruel lady who hated him, and kept it back. But 
by-and-by this lady was sick to death. Then she 
repented, and sent for the queen and gave her the 
ring, and confessed her wickedness. Poor Queen 
Elizabeth — her very heart was broken. She said 
to the dying woman, " God may forgive you, but I 



252 Young 'Folks' History of England. 

cannot." She said little more after that. She 
was old, and her strength failed her. Day after 
day she sat on a pile of cushions, with her finger 
on her lip, still growing weaker, and begging for 
the prayers the archbishop read her. And thus, 
she who had once been so great and spirited, sank 
into death, when seventy years old, in the 
year 1602. 




CHAPTER XXXIIJ 

JAMES I. 
A.U. 1002—1025. 

AFTER Queen Elizabeth's death, the next 
heir was James, the son of Mary of Scot- 
land and of Henry Stuart. He was the sixth 
James who had been king of Scotland, and had 
reigned there ever since his mother had been driven 
away. He had been brought up very strictly by 
the Scottish Reformers, who had made him very 
learned, and kept him under great restraint; 
and all that he had undergone had tended to make 
him very awkward and strange in his manners, 
lie was very timid, and could not bear to see a 
drawn sword ; and he was so much afraid of being 
murdered, that he used to wear a dress padded and 
stuffed out ail over with wool, which made him 
look even more clumsy than he was by nature. 
258 



254 Young Folks' History of England. 

The English did not much admire their new 
king, though it really was a great blessing that 
England and Scotland should be under the same 
king at last, so as to end all the long and bloody 
wars that had gone on for so many years. Still, 
the Puritans thought that, as James had been 
brought up in their way of thinking, they would 
be allowed to make all the changes that Queen 
Elizabeth had stopped ; and the Roman Catholics 
recollected that he was Queen Mary's son, and 
that his Reformed tutors had not made his life 
very pleasant to him as a boy, so they had hopes 
from him. 

But they both were wrong. James had really 
read and thought much, and was a much wiser 
man at the bottom than anyone would have 
thought who had seen his disagreeable ways, and 
heard his silly way of talking. He thought the 
English Church was much more in the right than 
either of them, and he only wished that things 
should go on the same in England, and that the 
Scots should be brought to have bishops, and to 
use the prayers that Christians had used from the 
very old times, instead of each minister praying 
out of his own head, as had become the custom. 
But though he could not change the ways of the 



James I. 255 

Scots at once, he caused all the best scholars and 
clergymen in his kingdom to go to work to make 
the translation of the Bible as right and good as it 
could be. 

Long before this was finished, however, some of 
the Roman Catholics had formed a conspiracy for 
getting rid of all the chief people in the kingdom ; 
and so, as they hoped, bringing the rest back to 
the pope. There were good men among the 
Roman Catholics who knew such an act would be 
horrible ; but there were some among them who 
had learnt to hate everyone that they did not 
reckon as of the right religion, and to believe that 
everything was right that was done for the cause 
of their Church. So these men agreed that on the 
day of the meeting of Parliament, when the king, 
with the queen and Prince of Wales, would all be 
meeting the lords and commons, they would blow 
the whole of them up with gunpowder ; and, while 
the country was all in confusion, the king dead, 
and almost all his lords and the chief country 
squires, they would take the king's younger chil- 
dren — Elizabeth or Charles, who were both quite 
little — and bring one up as a Roman Catholic to 
govern England. 

They hired some cellars under the Houses of 



256 Young Folks' History of England. 

Parliament, and stored them with barrels of gun- 
powder, hidden by faggots ; and the time was 
nearly come, when one of the lords called 
Monteagle, received a letter that puzzled him very 
much, advising him not to attend the meeting of 
Parliament, since a sudden destruction, would 
come upon all who would there be present, and 
yet so that they would not know the doer of it. 
No one knows who wrote the letter, but most 
likely it was one of the gentlemen who had been 
asked to join in the plot, and, though he would not 
betray his friends, could not bear that Lord 
Monteagle should perish. Lord Monteagle took 
the letter to the council, and there, after puzzling 
over it and wondering if it were a joke, the king 
said gunpowder was a means of sudden destruc- 
tion ; and it was agreed that, at any rate, it would 
be safer to look into the vaults. A party was sent 
to search, and there they found all the powder 
ready prepared, and, moreover, a man with a 
lantern, one Guy Fawkes, who had undertaken to 
be the one to set fire to the train of gunpowder, 
hoping to escape before the explosion. However, 
he was seized in time, and was forced to make 
confession. Most of the gentlemen concerned fled 
into the country, and shut themselves up in a 




THE GUNPOWDER PLOT DISCOVERED. 



^ 



James I. 259 

fortified house ; but there, strange to say, a barrel 
of gunpowder chanced to get lighted, and thus 
many were much hurt in the very way they had 
meant to hurt others. 

There was a great thanksgiving all over the 
country, and it became the custom that, on the 
5th of November — the day when the gunpowder 
plot was to have taken effect — there should be 
bonfires and fireworks, and Guy Fawkes' figure 
burnt, but people are getting wiser now, and think 
it better not to keep up the memory of old crimes 
and hatreds. 

Henry, Prince of Wales, was a fine lad, fond of 
all that was good, but a little too apt to talk of 
wars, and of being like Henry V. He was very 
fond of ships and sailors, and delighted in watching 
the building of a grand vessel that was to take his 
sister Elizabeth across the sea, when she was to 
marry the Count Palatine of the Rhine. Before 
the wedding, however, Prince Henry fell suddenly 
ill and died. 

King James was as fond of favorites as ever 
Elizabeth had been, though not of the same 
persons. One of the worst things he ever did was 
the keeping Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower for 
many years, and at last cutting off his head. It 



260 Young Folks' History of England. 

was asserted that Sir "Walter had tried, when first 
James came, to set up a lady named Arabella 
Stuart to be queen; bat if he was to be punished 
for that, it ought to have been directly, instead of 
keeping the sentence hanging- over his head for 
years. The truth was that Sir Walter had been a 
great enemy to the Spaniards, and James wanted 
to please them, for he wished his son Charles to 
marry the daughter of the King of Spain. Charles 
wanted to see her first, and set off for Spain, in 
disguise, with the Duke of Buckingham, who was 
his friend, and his father's greatest favorite. But 
when he reached Madrid, he found that the 
princesses were not allowed to speak to any gentle- 
man, nor to show their faces; and though he 
climbed over a wall to speak to her when she was 
walking in the garden, an attendant begged him to 
go away, or all her train would be punished. 
Charles went back disappointed, and, on his way 
through Paris, saw Henrietta Maria, the bright- 
eyed sister of the King of France, and set his heart 
on marrying her. 

Before this was settled, however, King James 
was seized with an ague and died, in the year 1625. 
He was the first king of the family of Stuart, and 
a very strange person he was — wonderfully 



James 1. 



261 



learned and exceedingly conceited j indeed, lie 
liked nothing better than to be called the English 
Solomon. The worst of Lim was that, like Eliza- 
beth, he thought kings and rulers might tell 
falsehoods and deceive. He called this kingcraft, 
and took this very bad sort of cunning for wisdom, 




CHAPTER XXXIIL 

CHARLES I. 
A.D. 1625—1649. 

SO many of the great nobles had been killed in 
the Wars of the Roses, that the barons had 
lost all that great strength and power they had 
gained when they made King John sign Magna 
Carta. The kings got the power instead ; and all 
through the reigns of the five Tudors, the sov- 
ereign had very little to hinder him from doing 
exactly as he pleased. But, in the meantime, the " 
country squires and the great merchants who sat 
in the House of Commons had been getting 
richer and stronger, and read and thought more. 
As long as Queen Elizabeth lived they were 
contented, for they loved her and were proud of 
her, and she knew how to manage them. She 
scolded them sometimes, but when she saw that 

262 



Charles L 263 

she was really vexing them she always changed, 
and she had smiles and good words for them, so 
that she could really do what she pleased with 
them. 

But James I. was a disagreeable man to have to 
do with ; and, instead of trying to please them, he 
talked a great deal about his own power as a king, 
and how they ought to obey him ; so that they were 
angered, and began to read the laws, and wonder 
how much power properly belonged to him. Now, 
when he died, his son Charles was a much 
pleasanter person; he was a gentleman in all his 
looks and ways, and had none of his father's 
awkward, ungainly tricks and habits. He was 
good and earnest, too, and there was nothing to 
take offence at in himself; so for some }~ears all 
went on quietly, and there seemed to be a great 
improvement. But several things were against 
him. His friend, the Duke of Buckingham, was a 
proud, selfish man, who affronted almost everyone, 
and made a bad use of the king's favor ; and the 
people were also vexed that the king should marry 
a' Roman Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, who 
would not go to church with him, nor even let her- 
self be crowned by an English archbishop. 

You heard that, in Queen Elizabeth's time, there 



264 Young Folks' History of England, 

were Puritans who would have liked to have the 
Prayer-book much more altered, and who fancied 
that every pious rule of old times must be wrong. 
They did not like the cross in baptism, nor the ring 
in marriage ; and they could nor bear to see a 
clergyman in a surplice. In many churches they 
took their own way, and did just as they pleased. 
But under James and Charles matters changed. 
Dr. Laud, whom Charles had made archbishop of 
Canterbury, had all the churches visited, and 
insisted on the parishioners setting them in order ; 
and if a clergyman would not wear a surplice, nor 
make a crpss on the baptized child's forehead, nor 
obey the other laws of the Prayer-book, he was 
punished. 

The Puritans were greatly displeased. They 
fancied the king and Dr. Laud wanted to make 
them all Roman Catholics again ; and a great many 
so hated these Church rules, that the}' took ship 
and went off to North America to found a colony, 
where they might set up their own religion as they 
liked it. Those who staid continued to murmur 
and struggle against Laud. 

There was another great matter of displeasure, 
and that was the way in which the king raised 
money. The right way is that he should call his 



Charles L 265 

Parliament together, and the House of Commons 
should grant him what he wanted. But there 
were other means. One was that every place it 
England should be called on to pay so much for 
ship money. This had begun when King Alfred 
raised his fleet to keep off the Danes, but it had 
come not to be spent on ships at all, but only to be 
money for the king to use. Another way that the 
kings had of getting money was from fines. 
People who committed some small offence, that did 
not come under the regular laws, were brought 
before the Council in a room at Westminster, that 
had a ceiling painted with stars — and so w r as 
called the Star Chamber — and there were sen- 
tenced, sometimes to pay heavy sums of money, 
sometimes to have their ears cut off. This Court 
of the Star Chamber had been begun in the days of 
Henry VII., and it is only a wonder that the 
English had borne it so long. 

One thing Charles I. did that pleased his people, 
and that was sending help to the French Prot- 
estants, who were having their town of Rochelle 
besieged. But the English w T ere not pleased that 
the command of the army was given to the Duke 
of Buckingham, his proud, insolent favorite. But 
Buckingham never went. As he was going to 



266 Young Folks' History of England. 

embark at Portsmouth, lie was stabbed to the 
heart by a man named Felton; nobody clearty 
knows why. 

Charles did not get on much better even when 
Buckingham was dead. Whenever he called a 
Parliament, fault was always found with him and 
with the laws. Then he tried to do without a 
Parliament ; and, as he, of course, needed money, 
the calls for ship money came oftener, and the 
fines in the Star Chamber became heavier, and 
more cases for them were hunted out. Then mur- 
murs arose. Just then, too, he and Archbishop 
Laud were trying to make the Scots return to the 
Church, by giving them bishops and a Prayer-book. 
But the first time the Service was read in a church 
at Edinburgh, a fishwoman, named Jenny Geddes, 
jumped up in a rage and threw a three-legged stool 
at the clergyman's head. Some Scots fancied they 
were being brought back to Rome ; others hated 
whatever was commanded in England. All these 
leagued together, and raised an army to resist the 
kinff: and he was obliged to call a Parliament once 
mure, to get money enough to resist them. 




ASSASSINATION OF BUCKINGHAM. 




V 

CHAPTER XXXrV. 

THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 
a.d. 1641—1649. 

WHEN Charles I. was obliged to call his Par- 
liament, the House of Commons met, 
angered at the length of time that had passed since 
they had been called, and determined to use their 
opportunity. They speedily put an end both to 
the payment of ship money and to the Court of the 
Star Chamber ; and they threw into prison the tAVo 
among the king's friends whom they most disliked, 
namely, Archbishop Laud and the Earl of Strafford. 
The earl had been governor of Ireland, and had 
kept great order there, but severely ; and he 
thought that the king was the only person who 
ought to have any power, and was always advising 

the king to put down all resistance by the strong 
269 



270 Young Folks' History of England. 

hand. He was thought a hard man, and very 
much hated ; and when he was tried the Houses of 
Parliament gave sentence against him that he 
should be beheaded. Still, this could not be done 
without the king's warrant ; and Charles at first 
stood out against giving up his faithful friend. 
But there was a great tumult, and the queen and 
her mother grew frightened, and entreated the 
king to save himself by giving up Lord Strafford, 
until at last he consented, and signed the paper 
ordering the execution. It was a sad act of weak- 
ness and cowardice, and he mourned over it all the 
days of his life. 

The Parliament only asked more and more, and 
at last the king thought he must put a check on 
them. So he resolved to go down to the House and 
cause the five members who spoke most against his 
power to be taken prisoners in his own presence. 
But he told his wife what he intended, and 
Henrietta Maria was so foolish as to tell Lady 
Carlisle, one of her ladies, and she sent warning to 
the five gentlemen, so that they were not in the House 
when Charles arrived ; and the Londoners rose up 
in a great mob, and showed themselves so angry 
with him, that he took the queen and his children 
away into the country. The queen took her 




EEN HENRIETTA MARIA. 



The Long Parliament. 273 

daughter Mary to Holland to marry the Prince of 
Orange ; and there she bought muskets and gun- 
powder for her husband's arm}' — for things had 
come to such a pass now that a civil war began. 
A civil war is the worst of all wars, for it is one 
between the people of the same country. England 
had had two civil wars before. There were the 
Barons' wars, between Henry III. and Simon de 
Montfort, about the keeping of Magna Carta ; and 
there were the wars of the Roses, to settle whether 
York or Lancaster should rei<m. This war be- 
tween Charles I. and the Parliament was to decide 
whether the king or the House of Commons should 
be most powerful. Those who held with the king 
called themselves Cavaliers, but the friends of the 
Parliament called them Malignants ; and they in 
turn nicknamed the Parliamentary party Round- 
heads, because they often chose not to wear their 
hair in the prevailing fashion, long and flowing on 
their shoulders, but cut short round their heads. 
Most of the Roundheads were Puritans, and hated 
the Prayer-book, and all the strict rules for relig- 
ious worship that Archbishop Laud had brought 
in ; and the Cavaliers, on the other hand, held by 
the bishops and the Prayer-book. Some of the 

Cavaliers were very good men indeed, and led holy 

iS 



274 Young Folks' History of England. 

and Christian lives, like their master the king, but 
there were others who were only bold, dashing 
men, careless and full of mirth and mischief; and 
the Puritans were apt to think all amusements and 
pleasures wrong, so that they made out the Cava- 
liers worse than they really were. 

I do not think you would understand about all 
the battles, so I shall only tell you now that the 
king's army was chiefly led by his nephew, Prince 
Rupert, the son of his sister Elizabeth. Rupert 
was a fiery, brave young man, who was apt to 
think a battle was Avon before it really was, and 
would ride after the people he had beaten himself 
without waiting to see whether his help was 
wanted by the other captains ; and so he did his 
uncle's cause as much harm as good. 

The king's party had been the most used to war, 
and they prospered the most at first; but as the 
soldiers of the Parliament became more trained, 
they gained the advantage. One of the members 
of Parliament, a gentleman named Oliver Crom- 
well, soon shewed himself to be a much better 
captain than any one else in England, and from the 
time he came to the chief command the Parliament 
always had the victory. The places of the three 
chief battles were Edgehill, Marston Moor, and 



The Long Parliament, 275 

Nasebjo The first was doubtful, but the other two 
were great victories of the Roundheads. Just after 
Marston Moor, the Parliament put to death Arch- 
bishop Laud ; and, at the same time, they forbade 
the use of the Prayer-book, and turned out all the 
parish priests from the churches, putting in their 
stead men chosen after their own fashion, and not 
ordained by bishops. They likewise destroyed all 
they disliked in the churches — the painted glass, 
the organs, and the carvings; and when the 
Puritan soldiers took possession of a town or 
village, they would stable their horses in the 
churches, use the font fur a trough, and shoot at 
the windows as marks. 

Afier the battle of Naseby, King Charles was in 
such distress that he thought he would go to the 
Scots, remembering that, though he had offended 
them by trying to make them use the Prayer-book, 
he had been born among them, and he thought 
they would prefer him to the English. Bat when 
lie came, the Scottish army treated him like a 
prisoner, and showed him very few honors; and at 
last they gave him up to the English Parliament 
for a great sum of money. 

So Charles was a prisoner to Ins own subjects. 



276 Young Folks' History of England. 

This Parliament is called the Long Parliament, 
because it sat longer than any other Parliament 
ever did : indeed it had passed a resolution that it 
could not be dissolved. 





CHAPTER XXXV. 



DEATH OP CHARLES I. 



A.D 1640—1651. 



r I ^HE Long Parliament did not wish to have nd 
-■- king, only to make him do what they 
pleased;, and then went on trying whether he 
would come back to reign according to their 
notions. He would have given up a great deal, 
but when they wanted him to declare that there 
277 



278 Young Folks' History of England, 

should be no bishops in England he would never 
consent, for he thought there could be no real 
Church without bishops, as our Lord himself had 
appointed. 

At last, after there had been much debating, and 
it was plain that it would never come to an end, 
Oliver Cromwell sent some of his officers to take 
King Charles into their hands, instead of the 
persons appointed by Parliament. So the king 
was prisoner to the army instead of to the 
Parliament. 

Cromwell was a very able man, and he saw that 
nobody could settle the difficulties about the law 
and the rights of the people but himself. He saw 
that things never would be settled while the king 
lived, nor by the Parliament, so he sent one of his 
officers, named Pryde, to turn out all the members 
of Parliament who would not do his will, and then 
the fifty who were left appointed a court of officers 
and lawyers to try the king. Charles was brought 
before them ; but, as they had no right to try him, 
he would not say a word in answer to them. 
Nevertheless, they sentenced him to have his head 
cut off. He had borne all his troubles in the most 
meek and patient way, forgiving all his enemies 
and praying for them : and he was ready to die in 



Death of Charles L 281 

the same temper. His queen was in France, and 
all his children were safe out of England, except 
his daughter Elizabeth, who was twelve years old, 
and little Henry, who was five. They were 
brought to Whitehall Palace for him to see the 
night before he was to die. He took the little boy 
on his knee, and talked a long time to Elizabeth, 
telling her what books to read and giving her his 
messages to her mother and brothers ; and then he 
told little Henry to mark what he said, and to 
mind that he must never be set up as a king while 
his elder brothers, Charles and James were alive. 
The little boy said through his tears, "I will be 
torn in pieces first." His father kissed and blessed 
the two children, and left them. 

The next day w r as the 30th of January, 1649. 
The king was allowed to have Bishop Juxon to 
read and pray with him, and to give him the holy 
communion. After that, forgiving his enemies, and 
praying for them, he was led to the Banqueting 
House at Whitehall, and out through a window, 
on to a scaffold hung with black cloth. He said 
his last prayers, and the executioner cut off his 
head with one blow r , and held it up to the people. 
He was buried at night, — a light snow falling at 
the time, — in St. George's Chapel at Windsor, by 



282 Young Folks' History of England, 

four faithful noblemen, but they were not allowed 
to use any service over his grave. 

The Scots were so much shocked to find what 
their selling of their king had come to, that they 
invited his eldest son, Charles, a young man of 
nineteen, to come and reign over them, and offered 
to set him on the English throne again. Young 
Charles came ; bat they were so strict that they 
made his life very dull and weary, since they saw 
sin in every amusement. However, they kept 
their promise of marching into England, and some 
of the English cavaliers joined them; but Oliver 
Cromwell and his army met them at Worcester, 
and they were entirely beaten. Young King 
Charles had to go away with a few gentlemen, and 
he was so closely followed that they had to put him 
in charge of some woodmen named Penderel, who 
lived in Boscobel Forest. They dressed him in a 
rough leather suit like their own, and when the 
Roundhead soldiers came to search, he was hidden 
among the branches of an oak tree above their 
heads. Afterwards, a lady named Jane Lane 
helped him over another part of his journey, by 
letting him ride on horseback before her as her ser- 
vant ; but, when she stopped at an inn, he was very 
near being found out, because he did not know 




EXECUTION OF KING CHARLES. 



Death of Charles L 285 

how to turn the spit in the kitchen when the cook 
asked him. However, he got safely to Brighton, 
which was only a little village then, and a boat 
took him to France, where his mother was living. 

In the meantime, his young sister and brother, 
Elizabeth and Henry, had been sent to the Isle of 
Wight, to Carisbrook Castle. Elizabeth was pin- 
ing away with sorrow, and before long she was 
found dead, with her cheek resting on her open 
Bible. After this, little Henry was sent to be with 
his mother in France. 

' The eldest daughter, Mary, had been married 
just as the war began to the Prince of Orange, who 
lived in Holland, and was left a widow with one 
little son. James, Dnke of York, the second 
brother, had at first been in the keeping of a Par- 
liamentary nobleman, with his brother and sister, 
in London ; but, during a game of hide-and-seek, 
he crept out of the gardens and met some friends, 
who dressed him in girls' clothes and took him to a 
ship in the Thames, which carried him to Holland. 
Little Henrietta, the youngest, had been left, when 
only six weeks old, to the care of one of her 
mother's ladies. When she was nearly three, the 
lady did not think it safe to keep her any longer 
in England. So she stained her face and hands 



286 Young Folks' History of England. 

brown, with walnut juice, to look like a, gipsy, took 
the child upon her back, and trudged to the 
coast. 

Little Henrietta could not speak plain, but she 
always called herself by a name she meant to be 
princess, and the lady was obliged to call her Piers, 
and pretend that she was a little boy, when the 
poor child grew angry at being treated so differ- 
ently from usual, and did all she possibly could to 
make the strangers understand that she was no 
beggar boy. However, at last she was safe across 
the sea, and was with her mother at Paris, where 
the king of France, Queen Henrietta's nephew, 
was very kind to the poor exiles. The misfortune 
was, that the queen brought up little Henrietta as 
a Roman Catholic, and tried to make Henry one 
also; but he was old enough to be firm to his 
father's Church, and he went away to his sister in 
Holland. James, however, did somewhat later be- 
come a Roman Catholic ; and Charles would have 
been one, if he had cared enough about religion to 
do what would have lessened his chance of getting 
back to England as king. But these two brothers 
were learning no good at Paris, and were growing 
careless of the right and fond of pleasure. James 
and Henry, after a time, joined the French army, 



Death of Charles L 



287 



that they might learn the art of war. They were 
both very brave, but it was sad that when France 
and England went to war, they should be in the 
army of the enemies of their country. 




CHAPTER XXXVI. 

OLIVER CHOMAVELL. 
a.d. 1649—1660. 

OLIVER Cromwell felt, as has been said, that 
there was no one who could set matters to 
rights as he could in England. He had shewn 
that the country could not do without him, if it 
was to go on without the old government. Not 
only had he conquered and slain Charles I., and 
beaten that king's friends and those of his son in 
Scotland, but he had put down a terrible rising of 
the Irish, and suppressed them with much more 
cruelty than he generally showed. 

He found that the old Long Parliament did 
nothing but blunder and talk, so he marched into 
the House one day with a company of soldiers, and 
sternly ordered the members all off, calling out, as 
he pointed to the mace that lay before the Speaker's 

288 




(JliOMWELL DISMISSING THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 



Oliver Cromwell. 291 

chair, "Take away that bauble." After that he 
called together a fresh Parliament ; but there were 
very few members, and those only men who would 
do as he bade them. The Speaker was a leather- 
seller named Barebones, so that this is generally 
known as Barebones' Parliament. By these people 
he was named Lord Protector of England ; and as 
his soldiers would still do anything for him, he 
reigned for five years, just as a king might have 
done, and a good king too. 

He was by no means a cruel or unmerciful man, 
and he did not persecute the Cavaliers more than 
he could help, if he was to keep up his power; 
though, of course, they suffered a great deal, since 
they had fines laid upon them, and some forfeited 
their estates for having resisted the Parliament. 
Many had to live in Holland or France, because 
there was no safety for them in England, and their 
wives went backwards and forwards to their homes 
to collect their rents, and obtain something to live 
upon. The bishops and clergy had all been driven 
out, and in no church was it allowable to use the 
Prayer-book ; so there used to be secret meetings 
in rooms, or vaults, or in woods, where the prayers 
could be used as of old, and the holy sacrament 
administered. 



292 Young Folks' History of England. 

For five years Cromwell was Lord Protector, 
but in the year 1658 he died, advising that his son 
Richard should be chosen Protector in his stead. 
Richard Cromwell was a kind, amiable gentleman, 
but not clever or strong like his father, and he 
very soon found that to govern England was quite 
beyond his power; so he gave up, and went to live 
at his own home again, while the English people 
gave him the nick-name of Tumble-down-Dick. 

No one seemed well to know what was to be 
done next ; but General Monk, who was now at 
the head of the army, thought the best thing 
possible would be to bring back the king. A new 
Parliament was elected, and sent an invitation to 
Charles II. to come back again and reign like his 
forefathers. He accepted it ; the fleet was sent to 
fetch him, and on the 29th of May, 1660, he rode 
into London between his brothers, James and 
Henry. The streets were dressed with green 
boughs, the windows hung with tapestry, and 
everyone shewed such intense joy and delight, that 
the king said he could not think why he should 
have staved away so long, since everyone was so 
glad to see him back again. 

But the joy of his return was clouded by the 
deaths of his sister Mary, the Princess of Orange, 




PORTRAIT OF MONK. 



Oliver Cromwell. 295 

and of his brother Henr} r , who was only just 
twenty. Mary left a son, William, Prince of 
Orange, of whom you will hear more. 

The bishops were restored, and, as there had 
been no archbishop since Laud had been beheaded, 
good Juxon, who had attended King Charles at his 
death, was made archbishop in his room. The 
persons who had been put into the parishes to act 
as clergymen, were obliged to give place to the 
real original parish priest ; but if he were dead, as 
was often the case, they were told that they might 
stay, if they would be ordained by the bishops and 
obey the Prayer-book. Some did so, some made 
an arrangement for keeping the parsonages, and 
paying a curate to take the service in church ; but 
those who were the most really in earnest gave up 
everything, and were turned out — but only as 
they had turned out the former clergymen ten or 
twelve years before. 

All Oliver Cromwell's army was broken up, and 
the men sent to their homes, except one regiment 
which came from Coldstream in Scotland. These 
would not disband, and when Charles II. heard it 
he said he would take them as his guards. This 
was the beginning of there being always a regular 
army of men, whose whole business it is to be 



296 Young Folks' History of England. 

soldiers, instead of any ma being called from his 
work when lie is wanted. 

Charles II. promised pardon to all the rebels, 
but he did try and execute all who had been 
actually concerned in condemning his father to 
death. 





CHAPTER XXXVTL 

CHAItLES II. 
a.d. 1660—1085. 

IT is sad to have to say that, after all his 
troubles, Charles II. disappointed everybody. 
Some of these disappointments could not be helped, 
but others were his own fault. The Puritan part}' 
thought, after they had brought him home again 
he should have been more favorable to them, and 
» . 297 



298 Young Folks' History of England. 

grumbled at the restoration of the clergymen and 
of the Prayer-book, The Cavaliers thought that, 

after all they had gone through for him and his 

father, lie ought to have rewarded them more : but 
he said truly enough, that if he had made a noble- 
man of everyone who had deserved well of him, no 
place but Salisbury Plain would have been big 

enough for the House of Lords to meet upon. 
Then those gentlemen who had got into debt to 
raise soldiers for the king's service, and had paid 
fir.es, or had Xo sell their estates, felt it hard not to 
have them again; but when a Roundhead gentle- 
man had honestly bought the property, it would 
have been still more unjust to turn them out. 
These two old names of Cavaliers and Roundheads 
began to turn into two others even more absurd. 
The Cavalier sot came to be called Tories, an Irish 
name for a robber, and the Puritans got the Scotch 
name of Whigs, which means buttermilk. 

It would have taken a very strong, wise, and 
good man to deal rightly with two such different 
sets ot people; but though Charles II. was a very 
clever man, he was neither wise nor good. He 
could not bear to vex himself, nor anybody else : 
and, rather than be teased, would grant almost 
anything that was asked of him. lie was so bright 



( 'harles II. 299 

and lively, and made such droll, good-natured 
answers, that everyone liked him who came near 
him; but he had no steady principle, only to stand 
easy with everybody, and keen as much power for 
himself as lie could without giving offence. He 
loved pleasure much better than duty, and kept 
about him a set of people who amused him, but 
were a disgrace to his court. They even took 
money from the French king to persuade Charles 
against helping the Dutch in their war against the 
French. The Dutch went to war with the English 
upon tins, and there were many terrible sea-fights. 
in which James, Duke of York, the king's brother, 
shewed himself a good and brave sailor. 

The year 1G05 is remembered as that in which 
there was a dreadful sickness in London, called the 
plague. People died of it often after a very short 
illness, and it was so infectious that it was difficult 
to escape it. When a person in a house was found 
to have it, the door was fastened up and marked 
with a red cross in chalk, and no one was allowed 
to go out or in ; food was set down outside to be 
fetched in, and carts came round to take away 
the dead, who were all buried together in long 
ditches. The plague was worst in the summer and 
autumn ; as winter came on more recovered and 



300 Young Folks' History of England, 

fewer sickened, and at last this frightful sickness 
was ended ; and by God's good mercy, it has never' 
since that year come to London. 

The next year, 16(36, there was a fire in London, 
which burnt down whole streets, with their 
churches, and even destroyed St. Paul's Cathedral. 
Perhaps it did good by burning down the dirty old 
houses and narrow streets where the plague might 
have lingered, but it was a fearful misfortune. It 
was only stopped at last by blowing up a space 
with gunpowder all round it, so that the flames 
might have no way to pass on. The king and his 
brother came and were very helpful in giving 
orders about this, and in finding shelter for many 
poor, homeless people. 

There was a good deal of disturbance in Scotland 
when the king wanted to bring back the bishops 
and the Prayer-book. Many of the Scots would 
not go- to church, and met on hills and moors to 
have their prayers in their own way. Soldiers 
were sent to disperse them, and there was much 
fierce, bitter feeling. Archbishop Sharpe was 
dragged out of his carriage and killed, and then 
there was a civil war, in which the king's men pre- 
vailed; but the Whigs were harshly treated, and 
there was great discontent. 



HSM'- Wf- IP l A -'-' : jSF m ' : - 




Charles IL 303 

The country was much troubled because the king 
and queen had no children i and the Duke of York 
was a Roman Catholic. A strange story was got 
up that there was what was called a popish plot for 
killing the king, and putting James on the throne. 
Charles himself laughed at it, for he knew every- 
one liked him and disliked his brother : " No one 
would kill me to make you king, James," he said ; 
but in his easy, selfish way, when he found that all 
the country believed in it, and wanted to have the 
men they fancied guilty put to death, he did not 
try to save their lives. 

Soon after this false plot, there was a real one 
called the Rye-house Plot. Long ago, the king- 
had pretended to marry a girl named Lucy Waters 
and they had a son whom he had made Duke of 
Monmouth, but who could not reign because there 
had been no right marriage. However, Lord 
Russell and some other gentlemen, who ought to 
have known better, so hated the idea of the Duke 
of York being king, that they joined in the Rye- 
house Plot for killing the duke, and forcing the 
king to make Monmouth his heir. Some of the 
more unprincipled sort, who had joined them, even 
meant to shoot Charles and James both together, 
on the way to the Newmarket races. However, 



304 Young Folks' History of England. 

the plot was found out, and the leaders were put 
to death. Lord Russell's wife, Lady Rachel, sat 
by him all the time of his trial, and was his great 
comfort to the last. Monmouth was pardoned, hut 
fled away Into Holland. 

The best thing to be said of Charles II. was that 
he made good men bishops, and he never was angry 
when they spoke out boldly about his wicked ways ; 
but then, lie never tried to leave them off, and he 
spent the very last Sunday of his life among his 
bad companions, playing at cards and listening to 
idle songs. Just after this came a stroke of apo- 
plexy, and, while he lay dying on his bed, he sent 
for a Roman Catholic priest, and was received into 
the Church of Rome, in which he had really 
believed most of his life — though he had never 
dared to own it, for fear of losing his crown. So, 
as he was living a lie, of course the fruits showed 
themselves in his selfish, wasted life. 

It was in this reign that two grand books were 
written. John Milton, a blind scholar and poet, 
who, before he lost his sight, had been Oliver 
Cromwell's secretary, wrote his Paradise Lost, or 
rather dictated it to his daughters ; and John 
Bunyan, a tinker, who had been a Puritan 
preacher, wrote the Pilgrim's Progress. 



/m^ 




CHAPTER XXXVIII. 



JAMES II. 



a.d. 16S5— 1GSS. 



TAMES II. had, at least, been honest in openh^ 

J joining the Church in which he believed ; but 

the people disliked and distrusted him, and he had 

not the graces of his brother to gain their hearts 

with, but was grave, sad, and stern. 

The Duke of Monmouth came across from 
20 305 



306 Young Folks' History of England. 

Holland, and was proclaimed king in his nncle's 
stead at Exeter. Many people in the West of 
England joined him, and at Taunton, in Somerset- 
shire, he was received by rows of little girls stand- 
ing by the gate in white frocks, strewing flowers 
before him. But at Sedgemoor he was met by the 
army, and his friends were routed ; he himself fled 
away, and at last was caught hiding in a ditch, 
dressed in a laborer's smock frock, and with his 
pockets full of peas from the fields. He was taken 
to London, tried, and executed. He did not 
deserve much pity, but James ought not to have 
let the people who had favored him be cruelly 
treated. Sir George Jeffreys, the chief justice, was 
sent to try all who had been concerned, from Win- 
chester to Exeter ; and he hung so many, and 
treated all so savagely, that his progress was called 
the Bloody Assize. Even the poor little maids at 
Taunton were thrown into a horrible, dirty jail, and 
only released on their parents paying a heavy sum 
of money for them. 

This was a bad beginning for James's reign ; and 
the English grew more angry and suspicious when 
they saw that he favored Roman Catholics more 
than anyone else, and even put them into places 
that only clergymen of the Church of England 




PORTRAIT OF MONMOUTH, 



James II 309 

could fill. Then he put forth a decree, declaring 
that a person might be chosen to any office in the 
State, whether he were a member of the English 
Church or no; and he commanded that every 
clergyman should read it from his pulpit on Sunday 
mornings. Archbishop Saner oft did not think it a 
right thing for clergymen to read, and he and six 
more bishops presented a petition to the king 
against being obliged to read it. One of these was 
Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, who 
wrote the morning hymn, " Awake, my soul, and 
with the sun," and the evening hymn, "All praise 
to Thee, my God, this night." Instead of listening 
to their petition, the king had all the seven bishops 
sent to the Tower, and tried for libel — that is, for 
malicious writing. All England was full of 
anxiety, and when at last the jury gave the verdict 
of "not guilty," the whole of London rang with 
shouts of jo}*, and the soldiers in their camp 
diouted still louder. 

This might have been a warning to the king ; for 
he had thought that, as he paid the army, they 
were all on his side, and would make the people 
bear whatever he pleased. The chief comfort peo- 
ple had was in thinking their troubles would only 
last during his reign : for his first wife, an English- 



310 Young Folks' History of England. 

woman, had only left him two daughters, Mary and 
Anne, and Mary was married to her cousin, 
William, Prince of Orange, who was a great enemy 
of the King of France and of the Pope ; and Anne's 
husband, Prince George, brother to the King of 
Denmark, was a Protestant. He was a dull man, 
and people laughed at him — because, whenever he 
heard any news, he never said anything but " Est 
il possible ? " is it possible ? But he had a little 
son, of whom there was much hope. 

But James had married again, Mar}^ Beatrice 
d'Este, an Italian princess; and, though none of 
her babies had lived before, at last she had a little 
son who was healthy and likely to live, and who 
was christened James. Poor little boy ! Every^ 
one was so angry and disappointed that he should 
have come into the world at all, that a story was 
put about that he was not the son of the king and 
queen, but a strange baby who had been carried 
into the queen's room in a warming-pan, because 
James was resolved to prevent Mary and William 
from reigning. 

Only silly people could believe such a story as 
this ; but all the Whigs, and most of the Tories, 
thought in earnest that it was a sad thing for the 
country to have a young heir to the throne brought 



James IL 311 

up to be a Roman Catholic, and to think it right to 
treat his subjects as James was treating them. 
Some would have been patient, and have believed 
that God would bring it right, but others were 
resolved to put a stop to the evils they expected ; 
and, knowing what was the state of people's minds, 
William of Orange set forth from Holland, and 
landed at Torbay. Crowds of people came to meet 
him, and to call on him to deliver them. It was 
only three years since the Bloody Assize, and they 
had not forgotten it in those parts. King James 
heard that one person after another had gone to 
the Prince of Orange, and he thought it not safe 
for his wife and child to be any longer in England. 
So, quietly, one night he put them in charge of a 
French nobleman who had been visiting him, and 
who took them to the Thames, where, after wait- 
ing in the dark under a church wall, he brought 
them a boat, and they reached a ship which took 
them safely to France. 

King James staid a little longer. He did not 
mind when he heard that Prince George of Den- 
mark had gone to the Prince of Orange, but only 
laughed, and said, " Est il possible?" but when he 
heard his daughter Anne, to whom he had always 
been kind, was gone too, the tears came into his 



812 Young Folks 9 History of England. 

eyes, and he said, " God help me, my own children 
are deserting me." He would have put himself at 
the head of the army, but he found that if he did 
so he was likely to be made prisoner and carried to 
William. So he disguised himself and set off for 
France ; but at Faversham, some people who took 
him for a Roman Catholic priest seized him, and he 
was sent back to London. However, as there was 
nothing the Prince of Orange wished so little as to 
keep him in captivity, he was allowed to escape 
again, and this time he safely reached France, 
where he was very kindly welcomed, and had the 
palace of St. Germain given him for a dwelling- 
place. , 

It was on the 4th of November, 1688, that 
William landed, and the change that now took 
place is commonly called the English Revolution. 

We must think of the gentlemen, during these 
reigns, as going about in very fine laced and ruffled 
coats, and the most enormous wigs. You know 
the Roundheads had short hair and the Cavaliers 
long : so people were ashamed to have short hair, 
and wore wigs to hide it if it would not grow, till 
everybody came to have shaven heads, and mon- 
strous wigs in great curls on their shoulders : and 



James II 



313 



even little boys' hair was made to look as like a 
wig as possible. The barber had the wig every 
morning to fresh curl, and make it white with hair 
powder, so that everyone might look like an old 
man, with a huge quantity of white hair : 




CHAPTER XXXIX, 

WILLIAM lit. AND MARY II. 
A.D 10S0— 1702. 

WHEN James II. proved to be entirely gone, 
the Parliament agreed to offer the crown 
to William of Orange — the next heir after James's 
children — and Mary, his wife, James's eldest 
daughter: but not until there had been new 
conditions made, which would prevent the kings 
from ever being so powerful again as they had 
been since the time of Henry VII. Remember, 
Magna Carta, under King John, gave the power to 
the nobles. They lost it by the wars of the Roses, 
and the Tudor kings gained it; but the Stuart 
kings could not keep it, and the House of Commons 
became the strongest power in the kingdom, by the 
Revolution of 1688. 

The House of Commons is made up of persons 

chosen — whenever there is a general election - — by 

314 



William III. and Mary IL 815 

the men who have a certain amount of property in 
each count}- and large town. There must be a 
fresh election, or choosing again every seven 3-ears; 
also, whenever the sovereign dies ; and the sover- 
eign can dissolve the Parliament — that is, break it 
up- — and have a fresh election whenever it is 
thought right. But above the House of Commons 
stands the House of Lords, or Peers. These are 
not chosen, but the eldest son, cr next heir of each 
lord, succeeds to his seat upon his death ; and fresh 
peerages are given as rewards to great generals, 
great lawyers, or people who have deserved well of 
their country. When a law has to be made, it has 
first to be agreed to by a majority — that is, the 
larger number — of the Commons, then by a 
majority of the Lords, and lastly, by the king or 
queen. The sovereign's council are called the 
ministers, and if the Houses of Parliament do not 
approve of their way of carrying on the govern- 
ment they vote against their proposals, and this 
generally makes them resign, that others may be 
chosen in their place who may please the country 
better. 

This arrangement has gone on ever since William 
and Mary came in. However, James II. still had 
many friends, only they had been out of reach at 



816 Young Folks' History of England, 

the first alarm. The Latin word for James is 
Jacobus, and, therefore, they were called Jacobites. 
All Roman Catholics were, of course, Jacobites; 
and there were other persons who, though grieved 
at the king's conduct, did not think it right to rise 
against him and drive him away ; and 3 having taken 
an oath to obey him, held that it would be wrong 
to swear obedience to anyone else while he was 
alive. Archbishop Bancroft was one of these. He 
thought it wrong in the new queen, Mary, to con- 
sent to take her father's place ; and when she sent 
to ask his blessing, he told her to ask her father's 
first, as, without that, his own would do her little 
good. Neither he nor Bishop Ken, nor some other 
bishops, nor a good many more of the clergy, 
would take the oaths to William, or put his name 
instead of that of James in the prayers at church. 
They rather chose to be turned out of their bishop- 
rics and parishes, and to live in poverty. They 
were called the non-jurors, or not-swearers. 

Louis, King of France, tried to send James back, 
and gave him the service of his fleet ; but it was 
beaten by Admiral Russell, off Cape La Hogue. 
Poor James could not help crying out, u See my 
brave English sailors!" One of Charles's old 
officers, Lord Dundee, raised an army of Scots in 



William III. and Mary II. 319 

James's favor, but he was killed just as he had won 
the battle of Killiecrankie ; and there was no one 
to take up the cause just then, and the Scotch 
Whigs were glad of the change. 

Most of James's friends, the Roman Catholics, 
were in Ireland, and Louis lent him an army with 
which to go thither and try to win his crown 
back. He got on pretty well in the South, but in 
the North — where Oliver Cromwell had given 
lands to many of his old soldiers — he met with 
much more resistance. At Londonderry, the ap- 
prentice boys shut the gates of the town and barred 
them against him. A clergyman named George 
Walker took the command of the city, and held it 
out for a hundred and five days against him, till 
everyone was nearly starved to death — and at last 
help came from England. William himself came 
to Ireland, and the father and son-in-law met in 
battle on the banks of the Boyne, on the 1st of 
July, 1690. James was routed ; and large numbers 
of the Irish Protestants have ever since kept the 
1st of July as a great holiday — commemorating 
the victory by wearing orange lilies and orange- 
colored scarfs. 

James was soon obliged to leave Ireland, and his 
friends there were severely punished. In the 
meantime, William was fighting the French in 



320 Young Folks' History of England. 

Holland — as he had done nearly all his life — 
while Mary governed the kingdom at home. She 
was a handsome, stately lady, and was much 
respected ; and there was great grief when she died 
of the small-pox, never having had any children. 
It was settled upon this that William should go on 
reigning as long as he lived, and then that Princess 
Anne should be queen ; and if she left no children, 
that the next after her should be the youngest 
daughter of Elizabeth, daughter of James I. Her 
name was Sophia, and she was married to Ernest 
of Brunswick, Elector of Hanover. It was also 
settled that no Roman Catholic, nor even anyone 
who married a Roman Catholic, could ever be on 
the English throne. 

Most of the Tories disliked this Act of Settle- 
ment; and nobody had much love for King 
William, who was a thin, spare man, with a large, 
hooked nose, and very rough, sharp manners — 
perhaps the more sharp because he was never in 
good health, and suffered terribly from the asthma. 
However, he managed to keep all the countries 
under him in good order, and he was very active, 
and always at Avar with the French. Towards the 
end of his reign a fresh quarrel began, in which all 
Europe took part. The King of Spain died with- 
out children, and the question was who should 



William III and Mary II 321 

reign after him. The King of France had married 
one sister of this king, and the Emperor of Ger- 
many was the son of her aunt. One wanted to 
make his grandson king of Spain, the other his son, 
and so there was a great war. "William IIL took 
part against the French — as he had always been 
their enemy; but just as the war was going to 
begin, as he was riding near his palace of Hampton 
Court, his horse trod into a mole-hill, and he fell, 
breaking his collar bone ; and this hurt his weak 
chest so much that he died in a few days, in the 
year 1702. The Jacobites were very glad to be rid 
of hini, and used to drink the health of the "little 
gentleman in a black velvet coat," meaning the 
mole which had caused his death. 
21 



CHAPTER XL, 

ANNE. 
A.D. 1702—1714. 

QUEEN Anne, the second daughter of James 
- II., began to reign on the death of William 
III. She was a well-meaning woman, but very 

weak and silly; and any person who know how to 
manacre her could make her have no will of her 
own. The person who had always had such power 
over her was Sarah Jennings, a lady in her train, 
who had married an officer named John Churchill. 
As this gentleman had risen in the army, he proved 
to be one of the most able generals who ever lived. 
He was made a peer, and, step by step, came to be 
Duke of .Marlborough. It was he and his wife 
who, being Whigs, had persuaded Anne to desert 
her father; and, now she was queen, she did just 
as they pleased. The duchess was mistress of the 

322 



rM 




QUEEN ANNE. 



Anne, 325 

robes, and more queen at home than Anne was; 
and the duke commanded the army which was 
sent to fight against the French, to decide who 
should be king of Spain. An expedition was sent 
to Spain, which gained the rock of Gibraltar, and 
this has been kept by the English ever since. 

Never were there greater victories than were 
gained by the English and German forces together, 
under the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene 
of Savoy, who commanded the Emperor's armies. 
The first and greatest battle of them all was fought 
at Blenheim, in Bavaria, when the French were 
totally defeated, with great loss. Marlborough 
w r as rewarded by the queen and nation buying an 
estate for him, which was called Blenheim, where 
woods were planted so as to imitate the position of 
his army before the battle, and a grand house built 
and filled with pictures recording his adventures. 
The other battles were all in the Low Countries — 
at Ramillies, Ondenarcle, and Malplaquet. The 
city of Lisle was taken after a long siege, and not 
a summer went by without tidings coming of some 
great victory, and the queen going in a state coach 
to St Paul's Cathedral to return thanks for it. 

But all this glory of her husband made the 
Duchess of Marlborough more and more jnmid and 



326 Young Folks' History of England. 

overbearing. She thought the queen could not do 
without her, and so she left off taking any trouble 
to please her; nay, she "would sometimes scold her 
more rudely than any real lady would do to any 
woman, however much below her In rank. Some- 
times she brought the poor queen to tears ; and on 
the day on which Anne went in state to St. Paul's, 
to return thanks for the victory of Oudenarde, she 
was scon to be crying all the way from St. James's 
Palace in her coach, with the six cream-colored 
horses, because the duchess had been scolding her 
for putting on her jewels in the way she liked best, 
instead of in the duchess's way. 

Now, Duchess Sarah had brought to the palace, 
to help to wait on the queen, a poor cousin of her 
own, named Abigail Masham, a much more smooth 
and gentle person, but rather deceitful. " When the 
mistress of the robes was unkind and insolent, the 
queen used to complain to Mrs. Masham; and by- 
and-by Abigail told her how to get free. There 
was a gentleman, well known to Mrs. Masham — 
Mr. Harley, a member of Parliament and a Tory, 
and she brought him in by the back stairs to sec 
the* queen, without the duchess knowing it. He 
undertook, if the queen would stand by him, to be 
her minister, and to turn out the Churchills and 



;-~x <- 







THE DUKE AXD DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH. 



Anne. 329 

their Whig friends, send away the tyrant duchess, 
and make peace, so that the duke might not be 
wanted any more. In fact, the war had gone on 
quite long enough ; the power of the King of 
France was broken, and lie was an old man, whom 
it was cruel to press further ; but this was not what 
Anne cared about so much as getting free of the 
duchess. There was great anger and indignation 
among all the Whigs at the breaking off the war 
in the midst of so much glory ; and, besides, the 
nation did not keep its engagements to the others 
with whom it had allied itself. Marlborough him- 
self was not treated as a man deserved who had 
won so much honor for his country, and he did 
not keep his health many years after his fall. 
Once, when he felt his mind getting weak, he 
looked up at his own picture at Blenheim, taken 
when he was one of the handsomest, most able, and 
active men in Europe, and said sadly, "Ah! that 
was a man." 

Mr. Harley was made Earl of Oxford, and 
managed the queen's affairs for her. He and the 
Tories did not at all like the notion of the German 
family of Brunswick — Sophia and her son George 
— who were to reign next, and they allowed the 
queen to look towards her own family a little more. 



330 Young Folks' History of England* 

Her father had died in exile, but there remained 
the young brother whom she had disowned, and 
whom the French and the Jacobites called King 

James III. If he would have joined the English 
Church Anne would have gladly invited him, and 
many of the English would have owned him as 
the right king : but he was too honest to give up 
his faith, and the queen could do nothing for him. 
Till her time the Scots — though since James I. 
they had been under the same king as England 
- — had had a separate Parliament. Lords and Com- 
mons, who sat at Edinburgh; but in the reign of 
Queen Anne the Scottish Parliament was united to 
the English one, and the members of it had to 
come to Westminster. Tins made many Scotsmen 
so angry that they became Jacobites ; but as every- 
body knew that the queen was a gentle, well- 
meaning old lady, nobody wished to disturb her, 
and all was quiet as long as she lived, so that her 
reign was an unusually tranquil one at home, though 
there were sueh splendid victories abroad. It was a 
time, too, when there were almost as many able 
writers as in Queen Elizabeth's time. The two books 
written at that day, which you are most likely to 
have heard of, are Kobinson Crusoe, written by 



Anne. 331 

Daniel Defoe, and Alexander Pope's translation of 
Homer's Iliad. 

Anne's Tory friends did not make her happy ; 
they used to quarrel among themselves and fright- 
ened her; and after one of their disputes she had 
an attack uf apoplexy, and soon died of it, in the 
year 1714. 

It- was during Anne's reign that it became the 
fashion to drink tea and coffee. One was brought 
from China, and the other from Arabia, not very 
long before, and they were very dear indeed. The 
ladies used to drink tea out of little cups of egg- 
shell china, and the clever gentlemen, who were 
called the wits, used to meet and talk at coffee- 
houses, and read newspapers, and discuss plays and 
poems ; also, the first magazine was then begun. 
It was called " The Spectator,'' and was managed 
by Mr. Addison. It came out once a week, and 
laughed at or blamed many of the foolish and 
mischievous habits of the time. Indeed it did 
much to draw people out of the bad ways that had 
come in with Charles II. 



CHAPTER XLI. 

GEORGE I. 
a.d. 1714—1725. 

THE Electress Sophia, who had always desired 
to be queen of England, had died a few 
months before Queen Anne ; and her son George, 
who liked his own German home much better than 
the trouble of reigning in a strange country, was in 
no hurry to come, and waited to see whether the 
English wonld not prefer the young James £>tuart. 
But as no James arrived Gearge set off, rather 
unwillingly, and was received in London in a dull 
kind of way. He hardly knew any English, and 
was obliged sometimes to talk bad Latin and 
sometimes French, when he consulted with his 
ministers. He did not bring a queen with him, for 
he had quarreled with his wife, and shut her up in 

a castle in Germany ; but he had a son, also named 

332 



George L 333 

George, who had a very clever, handsome wife — 
Caroline of Anspach, a German princess ; but the 
king was jealous of them, and generally made them 
live abroad. 

Just when it was too late, and George I. had 
thoroughly settled into his kingdom, the Jacobites 
in the North of England and in Scotland began to 
make a stir, and invited James Stuart over to try 
to gain the kingdom. The Jacobites used to call 
him James III., but the Whigs called him the 
Pretender ; and the Tories used, by way of a 
middle course, to call him the Chevalier — the 
French word for a knight, as that he certainly was, 
whether he were king or pretender. A white rose 
was the Jacobite mark, and the Whigs still held to 
the orange lily and orange ribbon, for the sake of 
William of Orange. 

The Jacobite rising did not come to any good. 
Two battles were fought between the king's troops 
and the ..Jacobites — one in England and the other 
in Scotland — on the very same day. The Scottish 
one was at Sheriff-muir, and was so doubtful, that 
the old Scottish song about it ran thus — 

Some say that we won, 
And some say that they won, 
Some say that none won 
At a', man : 



334 Young Folks' History of England, 

But of one thing I'm sure, 
That at Sheriff-muir 
A battle there was, 

Which I saw, man. 

And we ran, and they ran, 
And they ran, and we ran, 
And we ran, and they ran — 
Awa, man. 

The English one was at Preston, and in it the 
Jacobites were all defeated and made prisoners ; so 
that when their friend the Chevalier landed in 
Scotland, he found that nothing could he done, and 
had to go back again to Italy, where he generally 
lived, under the Pope's protection ; and where he 
married a Polish princess, and had two sons, whom 
he named Charles Edward and Henry. 

This rising of the Jacobites took place in the 
year 1715, and is, therefore, generally called the 
Rebellion of the Fifteen. The chief noblemen who 
were engaged in it were taken to London to be 
tried. Three were beheaded ; one was saved upon 
his wife's petition ; and one, the Earl of Nithsdale, 
by the cleverness of his wife. She was allowed to 
go and see him in the Tower, and she took a tall 
lady in with her, v/ho contrived to wear a double 
set of outer garments. The friend went away, 



George I. 335 

after a time ; and then, after waiting till the guard 
was changed, Lady Nithsdale dressed her husband 
in the clothes that had been brought in : and he, 
too, went away, with the hood over his face and a 
handkerchief up to his eyes, so that the guard 
might lake him for the other lady, crying bitterly 
at parting with the earl. The wife, meantime, 
remained for some time, talking and walking up 
and down as heavily as she could, till the time 
came when she would naturally be obliged to leave 
him — when, as she passed by his servant, she said 
to him that " My lord will not be ready for the 
candles just yet," — and then left the Tower, and 
went to a little lodging in a back street, where she 
found her husband, and where they both lay hid 
while the search for Lord Nithsdale was going on, 
and where they heard the knell tolling when his 
friends, the other lords, were being led out to have 
their heads cut off. Afterwards, they made their 
escape to France, where most of the Jacobites who 
had been concerned in the rising were living, 
as best they could, on small means — and some of 
them by becoming soldiers of the King of France. 

England was prosperous in the time of George I., 
and the possessions of the country in India were 
growing, from a merchant's factory here and there, 



836 Young Folks History of England. 

to large lands and towns. But the English never 
liked King George, nor did he like them; and he 
generally spent his time in his own native country 
of Hanover. He was taking a drive there in his 
coach, when a letter was thrown in at the window. 
As he was reading it, a sudden stroke of apoplexy 
came on, and he died in a few hours' time. No 
one ever knew what was in the letter, but some 
thought it was a letter reproaching him with his 
cruelty to his poor wife, who had died in her prison 
about eight months before. He died in the year 
1725. 

Gentlemen were leaving off full-bottomed wigs 
now, and wearing smaller ones ; and younger men 
had their own hair powdered, and tied up with 
ribbon in a long tail behind, called a queue. 
Ladies powdered their hair, and raised it to an im- 
mense height, and also wore monstrous hoops, long 
ruffles, and high-heeled shoes. Another odd fash- 
ion was that ladies put black patches on their faces, 
thinking they made them look handsomer. Both 
ladies and gentlemen took snuff, and carried beauti- 
ful snuff-boxes. 




gj=?^c -*^»- 



CHAPTER XLII. 



GEORGE II. 
A.d. 1725— 1760. 

THE reign of George II. was a yery warlike 
one. Indeed he was the last king of Eng- 
land who ever was personally in a battle ; and, 
curiously enough, thi* battle — that of Fontenoy — 
was the last that a king of France was also present 
in. It was, however, not a very interesting battle, 



22 



337 



338 Young Folks' History of England. 

and it was not clear who really won it, nor are the 
wars of this time very easy to understand. 

The battle of Fontenoy was fought in the course 
of a great war to decide who should be emperor of 
Germany, in which France and England took 
different .sides; and this made Charles Edward 
Stuart, the eldest son of James, think it was a 
good moment for trying once again to get back the 
crown of his forefathers. He was a fine-looking 
young man, with winning manners, and a great 
deal more spirit than his father: and when he 
landed in Scotland with a very few followers, one 
Highland gentleman after another was so delighted 
with him that they all brought their clans to join 
him, and he was at the head of quite a large force, 
with which he took possession of the town of Edin- 
burgh; but he never could take the castle. The 
English army was most of it away fighting in Ger- 
many, and the soldiers who met him at Prestcn- 
pans, close to Edinburgh, were not well managed, 
and were easily beaten by the Highlanders. Then 
he marched straight on into England : and there 
was great terror, for the Highlanders — with their 
plaids, long swords, and strange language — were 
thought to be all savage robbers, and the London- 
ers expected to have every house and shop ruined 



George II 339 

and themselves murdered : though on the whole 
the Highlanders behaved very well. They would 
probably have really entered London if they had 
gone on, and reached it before the army could come 
home, but they grew discontented and frightened 
at being so far away from their own hills ; and at 
Derby, Charles Edward was obliged to let them 
turn back to Scotland. 

The English army had come back by this time, 
and the Scots were followed closely, getting more 
sad and forlorn, and losing men in every day's 
march, till at last, after they had reached Scotland 
again, they made a stand against the English 
under the king's second son, William, Duke of 
Cumberland, at the heath of Culloden. There 
they were entirely routed, and the prince had to 
fly, and. hide himself in strange places and dis- 
guises, much as his great uncle, Charles II., had 
done before him. A young lady named Flora 
Macdonald took him from one of the Western Isles 
to another in a boat as her Irish maid, Betty 
Bourkc ; and, at another time, he was hid in a sort 
of bower, called the cage, woven of branches of 
trees on a hill side, where he lived with three 
Highlanders, who used to go out by turns to get 
food. One of them once brought him a piece of 



340 Young Folks' History of England. 

ginger-bread as a treat — for they loved him heart- 
ily for being patient, cheerful, and thankful for all 
they did for him ; and when at last he found a way 
of reaching France, and shook hands with them on 
bidding them farewell, one of them tied up his 
right hand, and vowed that no meaner person 
should ever touch it. 

His friends suffered as much as he did. The 
Duke of Cumberland and his soldiers cruelly 
punished all the places where he had been received, 
and all the gentlemen who had supported him 
were, if they were taken, tried and put to death as 
traitors — mostly at Carlisle. This, which was 
called the Rebellion of the Forty-five —because it 
happened in the year 1745 — was the last rising in 
favor of the Stuarts. Neither Charles Edward nor 
his brother Henry had any children, and so the 
family came to an end. 

The Empress Maria Theresa, of Germany, had a 
long war with Frederick, King of Prussia, who was 
nephew to George II., and a very clever and brave 
man, who made his little kingdom of Prussia very 
warlike and brave. But he was not a very good 
man, and these were sad times among the great 
people, for few of them thought much about being 
good: and there were clever Frenchmen who 






^ '% ^ ': '.U'f 




DEATH OF WOLFE, 



George 1L 343 

laughed at all religion. You know one of the 
Psalms says, " The fool hath said hi his heart, There 
is no God." There were a great many such fools 
at that time, and their ways, together with the 
selfishness of the nobles, soon brought terrible 
times to France, and all the countries round. 

The wars under George II. were by sea as well 
as by land: and, likewise, in the distant countries 
where Englishmen, on the one hand, and French- 
men, on the other, had made those new homes that 
we call colonies. In Xorth America, both English 
and French had large settlements ; and when the 
kings at home were at war, there were likewise 
battles in these distant parts, and the Indians were 
stirred up to take part with the one side or the 
other. They used to attack the homes of the 
settlers, burn them, kill and torment the men, and 
keep the children to bring up among their own. 
The English had, in general, the advantage, espe- 
cially in Canada, where the brave young General 
Wolfe led an attack, on the very early morning, to 
the Heights of Abraham, close to the town of 
Quebec. He was struck down by a shot early in 
the fight, and lay on the ground with a few officers 
round him. " The}' run, they run ! " he heard 
them cry. "Who run?" he asked. "The French 



344 Young Folks History of England. 

run/' "Then I die happy," he said; and it was 
by this battle that England won Lower Canada, 
with many French inhabitants, whose descendants 
still speak their old language. 

In the East Indies, too, there was much fighting. 
The English and French both had merchants there ; 
and these had native soldiers to guard them, and 
made friends with the native princes. When these 
princes quarreled they helped them, and so ob- 
tained a larger footing. But in this reign the 
English power was nearly ended in a very sad way. 
A Indian army came suddenly down on Calcutta. 
Many English got on board the ships, but those 
who could not — 146 in number — were shut up all 
night in a small room, in the hottest time of the 
year, and they were so crushed together and suffo- 
cated by the heat that, "when the morning came, 
there were only twenty-three of them alive. This 
dreadful place was known as the Black Hole of 
Calcutta. The next year Calcutta was won back 
again; and the English, under Colonel Clive, 
gained so much ground that the French had no 
power left in India, and the English could go on 
obtaining more and more land, riches and power. 

George II. had lost his eldest son, Frederick, 
Prince of Wales, and his lively and clever wife, 






George II. 



845 



Queen Caroline, many years before his death. 
His chief ministers were, first, Sir Robert Walpole, 
and afterwards the Earl of Chatham — -able men, 
who knew how to manage the country through all 
these wars. The king died at last, quite suddenly, 
when sixty-eight years old, in the year 17C0. 





CHAPTER XLIII. 



GEORGE IIL 



a.d. ttGO— 1785. 



A FTER George II. reigned his grandson, 
-*■ -^- George III., the son of Frederick, Prince 
of Wales, "who had died before his father. The 
Princess of Wales, was a good woman, who tried 
to bring up her children well ; and George III. was 
a dutiful son to her, and a good, faithful man — 

3rl0 






George III. 347 

always caring more to do right than for anything 
else. He had been born in England, and did not 
feel as if Hanover were his home, as his father and 
grandfather had done, but loved England, and 
English people, and ways. When he was at Wind- 
sor, he used to ride or walk about like a country 
squire, and ho had a ruddy, hearty face and 
manner, that made him sometimes be called Farmer 
George ; and he had an odd way of saying " What ? 
what?" when he was spoken to, which made him 
be laughed at ; but he was as good and true as any 
inan who ever lived : and when he thought a thins: 
was right, he was as firm as a rock in holding to it. 
He married a German princess named Charlotte, 
and they did their very utmost to make all those 
about them good. They had a very large family 
— no less than fourteen children — and some old 
people still remember what a beautiful sight it was 
when, after church on Sunday, the king and queen 
and their children used to walk up and down the 
stately terrace at Windsor Castle, with a band 
playing, and everyone who was respectably dressed 
allowed to come and look at them. 

Just after George III. came to the crown, a 
great war broke out in the English colonies in 
America. A new tax had been made. A tax 



348 Young Folk;/ History of England. 

means tlio money that has to be given to the 
Government of a country to pay vtlic judges and 
their officers, the soldiers and sailors, to keep Up 
ships and buy weapons, and do all that is wanted 
to protect us and keep us in order. Taxes are 
sometimes made by calling on everybody to pay 
money in proportion to what they have — say 
threepence for every hundred pounds , sometimes 
they are made by putting what is called a duty on 
something that is bought and sold — making it sell 
for more than its natural price — so that the Gov- 
ernment gets the money above the right cost. 
This is generally done with things that people 
could live without, and had better not buy too 
much of — such as spirits, tobacco, and hair-powder. 
And as tea was still a new thing in England, which 
only fine ladies drank, it was thought useless, and 
there was a heavy duty laid upon it when the king 
wanted money. Now, the Americans got their tea 
straight from China, and thought it was unfair 
that they should pay tax on it. So, though they 
used it much more than the English then did, they 
gave it up, threw whole ship-loads of it into the 
harbor at Boston, and resisted the soldiers. A 
gentleman named George Washington took the 
command, and they declared they would fight for 



.A 




FK AN KLIN, 



George IIL 351 

freedom from the mother country. The French 
were beginning to think freedom was a fine thing, 
and at first a few French gentlemen came over to 
fight among the Americans, and then the king, 
Louis XVI., quarreled with George III., and 
helped them openly. 

There was a very clever man among the Ameri- 
cans named Benjamin Franklin, a printer by trade, 
but who made very curious discoveries. One of 
them was that lightning 1 comes from the strange 
power men call electricity, and that there are some 
substances which it will run along, so that it can 
be brought down to the ground without doing any 
mischief — especially metallic wires. lie made 
sure of it by flying a kite, with such an iron wire, 
up to the clouds when there was a thunder-storm. 
The lightning* was attracted by the wire, ran right 
down the wet string of the kite, and only glanced 
off when it came to a silk ribbon — because 
electricity will not go along silk. After this, such 
wires were fastened to buildings, and carried down 
into the ground, to convey away the force of the 
lightning. Perhaps you have seen them on the 
tops of churches or tall buildings; they are called 
conductors. Franklin was a plain-spoken, homely- 
dressing man ; and when he was sent to Paris on 



352 Young Folks' History of England, 

the affairs of the Americans, all the great ladies 
and gentlemen went into raptures about his beauti- 
ful simplicity, and began to imitate him, in a very 
affected, ridiculous way. 

In the meantime, the war went on between 
America and England, year after year; and the 
Americans became trained soldiers and got the 
better, so that George III. was advised to give up 
his rights over them. Old Lord Chatham, his grand- 
father's minister, who had long been too sick and 
feeble to undertake aii} r public business, thought it 
so bad. for the country to give anything up, that he 
came down to the House of Lords to make a speech 
against doing so ; but he was not strong enough for 
the exertion, and had only just done speaking 
when he fainted away, and his son, William Pitt, 
was called out of the House of Commons to help 
to carry him away to his coach. He Avas taken 
home, and died in a few day's time. 

The war went on, but when it had lasted seven- 
teen years, the English felt that peace must be 
made ; and so George III. gave up his rights to all 
that country that is called the United States of 
America. The United States set up a Government 
of their own, which has gone on ever since, 
without a king, but with a President, who i3 



George in. 353 

freshly chosen every four years, and for whom 
every citizen has a vote. 

As if to make up for what was lost in the West, 
the English were winning a great deal in the East 
Indies, chiefly from a great prince called Tippoo 
Sahib, who was very powerful, and at one time 
took a number of English officers prisoners, 
and drove them to his city of Seringapatam, 
chained together in pairs, and kept them half 
starved in a prison, where several died ; but he was 
defeated and killed. They were set free by their 
countrymen, after nearly two years of grievous 
hardship. 

23 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

GEORGE III. 
A.D. 17S5— 1810. 

r I ^HE chief sorrow of George III. was that his 
-*- eldest sons were wild, disobedient young 
men. George, Prince of Wales, especially, was 
very handsome, and extremely proud of his own 
beauty. He was called the First Gentleman in 
Europe, and set the fashion in every matter of 
taste ; but he spent and wasted money to a shame- 
ful amount, and was full of bad habits; besides 
which, he used to set himself in every way in his 
power to vex and contradict his father and mother, 
whom he despised for their plain simple ways and 
their love of duty. The next two brothers — Fred- 
crick, Duke of York, and William, Duke of 
Clarence — had also very bad habits ; but they 
went astray from carelessness, and did not wilfully 
oppose their father, like their eldest brother. 

351 




PORTRAIT OF TITT, 



George III. 357 

William Pitt, son of Lord Chatham, was Prime 
Minister. He thought that the Roman Catholics 
iii England ought to have the same rights as the 
king's other subjects, and not be hindered from 
being members of Parliament, judges, or, indeed, 
from holding any office, and he wanted to bring a 
bill into Parliament for this purpose. But the 
king thought that for him to consent would be 
contrary to the oath he had sworn when he was 
crowned, and which had been drawn up when 
William of Orange came over. Nothing would 
make George III. break his word, and lie re- 
mained firm, though he was so harassed and 
distressed that he fell ill, and lost the use of his 
reason for a time. There were questions whether 
the regency — that is, the right to act as king — 
should be given to the son, who, though his heir, 
was so unlike him, when he recovered ; and there 
was a great day of joy throughout the nation, when 
he went in state to St. Paul's Cathedral to return 
thanks. 

In the meantime, terrible troubles were going on 
in France. Neither the kings nor nobles had. for 
ages past, any notion of their proper duties to the 
people under them, but had ground them down so 
hard that at last they could bear it no longer ; 



358 Young Folks' History of England. 

and there was a great rising up throughout the 
country, which is known as the great French 
Revolution. The king who was then reigning was 
a good and kind man, Louis XVI., who would 
gladly have put things ill better order ; but he was 
not as wise or firm as lie was good, and the people 
hated him for the evil doings of his forefathers. 
So, while he was trying to make up his mind what 
to do, the power was taken out of his hands, and 
he, with his wife, sister, and two children, were 
shut up in prison. An evil spirit came into the 
people, and made them believe that the only way 
to keep themselves free would be to get rid of all 
who had been great people in the former days. So 
they set up a machine for cutting off heads, called 
the guillotine, and there, day after day, nobles and 
priests, gentlemen and ladies — even the king, 
queen, and princess, were brought and slain. The 
two children were not guillotined, but the poor 
little boy, only nine years old, was worse off than 
if he had been, for the cruel wretches who kept 
him called him the wolf-cub, and said he was to be 
got rid of, and they kept him alone in a dark, dirty 
room, and used him so ill that he pined to death. 
His sister remained in prison till better days came. 
Many French gentry and clergymen fled to Eng- 



George III. 359 

land, and there were kindly treated and helped to 
live ; and the king's brother, now the rightful king 
himself, found a home there too. 

At last the French grew weary of this horrible 
bloodshed ; but, as they could not manage them- 
selves, a soldier named Napoleon Bonaparte, by his 
great cleverness and the victories he gained over 
other nations, succeeded in getting all the power. 
His victories were wonderful. He beat the Ger- 
mans, the Italians, the Russians, and conquered 
wherever he went. There was only one nation he 
never could beat, and that was the English ; though 
he very much wanted to have come over here with 
a great fleet and army, and have conquered our 
island. All over England people got ready. All 
the men learnt something of how to be soldiers, 
and made themselves into regiments of volunteers ; 
and careful watch was kept against the quantities 
of flat-bottomed boats that Bonaparte had made 
ready to bring his troops across the English 
Channel. But no one had ships and sailors like 
the English; and, besides, they had the greatest 
sea-captain who ever lived, whose name was Hora- 
tio Nelson. When the French went under Napo- 
leon to try to conquer Egypt and all the East, 
Nelson went after them with his ships, and beat 



360 Young Folks' History of England. 

the whole French fleet, though it was a great deal 
larger than his own, at the mouth of the Kile, 
blowing up the Admiral's ship, and taking or burn- 
ing many more. Afterwards, when the King of Den- 
mark was being made to take part against England, 
Nelson's fleet sailed to Copenhagen, fought a sharp 
battle, and took all the Danish ships. And lastly, 
when Spain had made friends with France, and 
both their fleets had joined together against En- 
gland, Lord Nelson fought them both off Cape 
Trafalgar, and gained the greatest of all his 
■victories ; but it was his last, for a Frenchman on 
the mast-head shot him through the backbone, and 
lie died the same night. No one should ever 
forget the order he gave to all his sailors in all the 
ships before the battle — " England expects every 
man to do his duty." 

After the battle of Trafalgar the sea was cleared 
of the enemy's ships, and there was no more talk 
of invading England. Indeed, though Bonaparte 
overran nearly all the Continent of Europe, the 
smallest strip of sea was enough to stop him, for 
his ships could not stand before the English ones. 

All this time English affairs were managed by 
Mr. Pitt, Lord Chatham's bon ; but he died the 
very same year as Lord Nelson was killed, 1805, 



George III. 3G1 

and then his great rival, Mr. Fox, was minister in his 
stead: but he, too, died very soon, and affairs were 
managed by less clever men, but who were able to 
go on in the line that Pitt had marked out for them : 
and that was, of standing up with all their might 
against Bonaparte — though lie now called himself 
the Emperor, Napoleon I., and was treading down 
every country in Europe. 

The war time was a hard one at home in 
England, for everything was very dear and the 
taxes were high; but everyone felt that the only 
Way to keep the French away was to go on fight- 
ing with them, and trying to help the people in the 
countries they seized upon. So the whole country 
stood up bravely against them. 

Sad trouble came on the good old king in his 
later years. He lost his sight, and, about the same 
time, died his youngest child, the Princess Amelia, 
of whom he was very fond. His grief clouded his 
mind again, and there was no recovery this time. 
He was shut up in some rooms at Windsor Castle, 
where he had music to amuse him, and his good 
wife, Queen Charlotte, watched over him carefully 
as long as she lived. 



CHAPTER XLV. 

GEOKGE III. THE REGENCY. 

a-.d 1810—1820. 

WHEN George III. lost his senses, the govern- 
ment was given to his son, the Prince of 
Wales — the Prince Regent as he was called. 
Regent means a person ruling instead of the king, 
everj one expected that, as he had always quarreled 
with his father, he would change everything and 
have different ministers ; but instead of that, he 
went on just as had been done before, fighting with 
the French, and helping every country that tried 
to lift up its head against Bonaparte. 

Spain was one of these countries. Napoleon had 
managed to get the king, and queen, and eldest 
son, all into his hands together, shut them up as 
prisoners in France, and made his own brother 
king. But the Spaniards were too brave to bear 

this, and they rose up against him, calling the 

362 



George III.— The Regency. 363 

English to help them. Sir John Moore was sent 
first, and he marched an army into Spain 3 but, 
though the Spaniards were brave, they were not 
steady, and when Napoleon sent more troops 
he was obliged to march back over steep hills, 
covered with snow, to Corunna, where he had left 
the ships. The French followed him, and he had 
to fight a battle to drive them back, that his 
soldiers might embark in quiet. It was a great 
"victory ; but in the midst of it Sir John Moore was 
wounded by a cannon shot, and only lived long 
enough to hear that the battle was won. He was 
buried at the dead of night on the ramparts of 
Corunna, wrapped in his cloak. 

However, before the year was over, Sir Arthur 
Wellesley was sent out to Portugal and Spain. 
He never once was beaten, and though twice he 
had to retreat into Portugal, he soon won back the 
ground he had lost; and in three years' time he 
had driven the French quite out of Spain, and even 
crossed the Pyrenean mountains after them, forcing 
them back into their own country, and winning the 
battle of Toulouse on their own ground. This 
grand war had more victories in it than you will 
easily remember. The chief of them were at 
Salamanca, Vittoria, Orthes, and Toulouse ; and 



364 Young Folks" History of England. 

the whole war was called the Peninsular War, 
because it was fought in the Peninsular of France 
and Spain. Sir Arthur Wellesley had been made 
Duke of Wellington, to reward him, and he set off 
across France to meet the armies of the other 
European countries. For, while the English were 
fighting in Spain, the other states of Europe had 
all joined together against Napoleon, and driven 
him away from robbing them, and hunted him at 
last back to Paris, where they made him give up 
all his unlawful power. The right king of France, 
Louis XVIIL, was brought home, and Napoleon 
was sent to a little island named Elba, in the Medi- 
terranean Sea, where it was thought he could do 
no harm. 

But only the next year he managed to escape, 
and came back to France, where all his old soldiers 
were delighted to see him again. The king was 
obliged to fly, and Napoleon was soon at the head 
of as large and fierce an army as ever. The first 
countries that were ready to fight with him were 
England and Prussia. The Duke of Wellington 
with the English, and Marshal Blucher with the 
Prussian army, met him on the field of Waterloo, 
in Belgium ; and there he was so entirely defeated 
that he had to flee away from the field. But he 




■fill 



'"-■%'-:--•: ■■">:"■ .ICJ'JKWIIIIEBaMI 



George III.— The Regency. 367 

found no rest or shelter anywhere, and at last 
was obliged to give himself up to the captain of an 
English ship named the Bellerophon. lie was taken 
to Plymouth harbor, and kept in the ship while it 
was being determined what should be done with 
him : and at length it was decided to send him to 
St. Helena, a very lonely island far away in the 
Atlantic Ocean, whence he would have no chance 
of escaping. There he was kept for five years, at 
the end of which time he died. 

The whole of Europe was at peace again ; but 
the poor old blind King George did not know it, 
nor how much times had changed in his long reign. 
The war had waked people up from the dull state 
they had been in so long, and much was going on 
that began greater changes than anyone thought 
of. Sixty years before, when he began to reign, 
the roads were so bad that it took three days to go 
by coach to London from Bath; now they were 
smooth and good, and fine swift horses were kept 
at short stages, which made the coaches take only 
a few hours on the journey. Letters came much 
quicker and more safely ; there were a great many 
newspapers, and everybody Avas more alive. Some 
great writers there were, too : the Scottish poet, 
Walter Scott, who wrote some of the most delight- 



368 Young Folks' History of England. 

ful tales there are in the world ; and three who 
lived at the lakes — Wordsworth, South ey, and 
Coleridge. It was only in this reign that people 
cared to write books for children. Mrs. Trimmer's 
"Robins," Mr. Day's "Sandford and Merton," and 
Miss Edgeworth's charming stories were being 
written in those days. Mrs. Trimmer, and another 
good lady called Hannah More, were trying to get 
the poor in villages better taught ; and there was a 
very good Yorkshire gentleman — William Wilber- 
force — who was striving to make people better. 

As to people's looks in those days, they had quite 
left off wigs — except bishops, judges, and lawyers, 
in their robes. Men had their hair short and curly, 
and wore coats shaped like evening ones — gen- 
erally blue, with brass buttons — buff waistcoats, 
and tight trousers tucked into their boots, tight 
stocks round their necks, and monstrous shirt-frills. 
Ladies had their gowns and pelisses made very 
short- waisted, and as tight and narrow as they 
could be, though with enormous sleeves in them, 
and their hair in little curls on their foreheads. 
Old ladies wore turbans in evening dress ; and both 
they and their daughters had immense bonnets and 
hats, with a high crown and very large front. 

In the year 1820, the good old king passed away. 



CHAPTER XLVI. 

GEORGE IV. 
A.D. 1820— 1880. 

GEORGE IV. was not much under sixty years 
old when he came to the throne, and had 
really been king in all but the name for eight years 
past. He had been married to the Princess Caro- 
line of Brunswick, much against his will, for she 
was, though a princess, far from being a lady in 
any of her ways, and he disliked her from the first 
moment he saw her ; and though he could not quite 
treat her as Henry VIII. had treated Anue of 
Cleves, the two were so unhappy together that, 
after the first year, they never lived in the same 
house. They had had one child, a daughter, 
named Charlotte — a good, bright, sensible, high- 
spirited girl — on whom all the hopes of the 

country were fixed ; but as she grew up, there were 
24 3G9 



370 Young Folks' History of England. 

many troubles between her love and her duty 
towards her father and mother. As soon as the 
peace was made, the Princess of Wales went to 
Italy and lived there, with a great many people of 
bad characters about her. Princess Charlotte was 
married to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, and 
was very happy with him ; but, to the great grief of 
all England, she died in the bloom of her youth, 
the year before her grandfather. 

George IV., though he was so much alone in the 
world, prepared to have a most splendid corona- 
tion ; but as soon as his wife heard that he was 
king, she set off to come to England and be 
crowned with him. He was exceedingly angry, 
forbade her name to be put into the Prayer-book as 
queen, and called on the House of Lords to break 
his marriage with one who had proved herself not 
worthy to be a wife. There was a great uproar 
about it, for though the king's friends wanted him 
to be rid of her, all the country knew that he had 
been no better to her than she had been to him, 
and felt it unfair that the weaker one should have 
all the shame and disgrace, and the stronger one 
none. One of Caroline's defenders said that if her 
name were left out of the Litany, yet still she was 
prayed for there as one who was desolate and 



George IV. 371 

oppressed. People took up her cause much more 
hotly than she deserved, and the king was obliged 
to give up the enquiry into her behavior, but still 
he would not let her be crowned. In the midst of 
all the splendor and solemnity in Westminster 
Abbey, a carriage was driven to the door and 
entrance was demanded for the queen ; but she 
was kept back, and the people did not seem 
disposed to interrupt the show by doing anything 
in her favor, as she and her friends had expected. 
She went back to her rooms, and, after being more 
foolish than ever in her ways, died of fretting and 
pining. It is a sad history, where both were much 
to blame ; and it shows how hateful to the king she 
must have been, that, when Napoleon died he was 
told his greatest enemy was dead, he answered, 
" When did she die ? " But if he had been a good 
man himself, and not selfish, he would have borne 
with the poor, ill brought up, giddy girl, when first 
she came, and that would have prevented her 
going so far astray. 

George IV, made two journeys — one to Scot- 
land, and the other to Ireland. He was the first of 
the House of Brunswick who ever visited these 
other two kingdoms, and he was received in both 



372 Young Folks* History of England. 

with great splendor and rejoicing ; but after this 
his health began to fail, and he disliked showing 
himself. He spent most of his time at a house he 
had built for himself at Brighton, called the 
Pavilion, and at Windsor, where he used to drive 
about in the park. He was kind and gracious to 
those with whom he associated, but they were as 
few as possible. 

He was vexed and angry at having to consent to 
the Bill for letting'' Roman Catholics sit in Parlia- 
ment, and 'hold other office — the same that his 
father had stood out against. It was not that he 
cared for one religion more than another,- for he 
had never been a religious man, but he saw 
that it would be the beginning of a great man}^ 
changes that would alter the whole state of things. 
His next brother, Frederick, Duke of York, died 
before him ; and the third, William, Duke of Clar- 
ence, who had been brought up as an officer in the 
navy, was a friend of the Whigs, and of those who 
were ready to make alterations. 

Changes were coming of themselves, though — 
for inventions were making progress in this time of 
peace. People had begun to find out the great 
power of steam, and had made it move the ships, 



George IK 373 

which had hitherto depended upon the winds, and 
thus it became much easier to travel from one 
country to another and to send goods. Steam was 
also being used to work engines for spinning and 
weaving cotton, linen, and wool, and for working 
in metals ; so that what had hitherto been done by 
hand, by small numbers of skilful people, was now 
brought about by large machines, where the labor 
was done by steam ; but quantities of people were 
needed to assist the engine. And as steam cannot 
be had without fire, and most of the coal is in the 
Northern parts of England, almost all of these 
works were set up in them, and people flocked to 
get work there, so that the towns began to grow 
very large. Manchester was one, with Liverpool 
as the sea-port from which to send its calico and 
get its cotton. Sheffield and Birmingham grew 
famous for works in iron and steel, and so on ; and 
all this tended to make the manufacturers as rich 
and great as the old lords and squires, who had 
held most of the power in England ever since, at 
the Revolution, they had got it away from the king. 
Everyone saw that some great change would soon 
come ; but before it came to the point George IV. 
fell ill, and died after a reign of twenty years in 



874 Young Folks' History of England. 

reality, but of only ten in name, the first five of 
which were spent in war, and the last fifteen in 
peace. The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert 
Peel were his chief ministers — for the duke was as 
clear-headed in peace as he was in war. 




CHAPTER XLVIL 

WILLIAM IV. 
a.d. 1830—1837. 

GEORGE IV. had, as you know, no child 
living at the time of his death. His next 
brother, Frederick Duke of York, died before him, 
likewise without children, so the crown went 
to William, Duke of Clarence, third son of George 
III. He had been a sailor in his younger days, but 
was an elderly man when he came to the throne. 
He was a dull and not a very wise man, but good- 
natured and kind, and had an open, friendly, sailor 
manner : and his wife, Queen Adelaide, of Saxe- 
Meiningen, was an excellent woman, whom every- 
one respected. They never had any children but 
two daughters who died in infancy : and everyone 
knew that the next heir must be the Princess 
Victoria, daughter to the next brother, Edward, 
Duke of Kent, who had died the year after she was 
born. 

375 



376 Young Folks' History of England. 

King William IV. had always been friendly 
with the Whigs, who wanted power for the people. 
Those who went furthest among them were called 
Radicals, because they wanted a radical reform — 
that is, going to the root. In fact, it was time to 
alter the way of sending members to the House of 
Commons, for some of the towns that had once 
been big enough to choose one were now deserted 
and grown very small, while on the other hand, 
others which used to be little villages, like 
Birmingham and Brighton, had now become very 
large, and full of people. 

The Duke of Wellington and his friends wanted 
to consider the best way of setting these things 
to rights, but the Radicals wanted to do much 
more and much faster than he was willing to grant. 
The poor fancied that the new rights proposed 
would make them better off all at once, and that 
every man would get a fat pig in his sty and as 
much bread as he wanted ; and they were so angry 
at any delay, that they went about in bands burn- 
ing the hay-ricks and stacks of corn, to frighten 
their landlords. And the Duke of Wellington's 
great deeds were forgotten in the anger of the 
mob, who gathered round him, ready to abuse and 
pelt him as he rode along ; and yet, as they saw 



William IV. 377 

his quiet, calm way of going on, taking no heed to 
them, and quite fearless, no one raised a hand. 
They broke the windows of his house in London, 
though, and he had iron blinds put up to protect 
them. He went out of office, and the Whigs came 
in, and then the Act of Parliament was passed 
which was called the Reform bill — because it set 
to rights what had gone wrong as to which towns 
should have members of their own, and, besides, 
allowed everyone in a borough town, who rented a 
bouse at ten pounds a year, to vote for the member 
of Parliament. A borough is a town that has a 
member of Parliament, and a city is one that is 
large enough to have a mayor and an alderman to 
manage its affairs at home. 

Several more changes were made under King 
William. Most of the great union workhouses 
were built then, and it was made less easy to get 
help from the parish without going to live in one. 
This was meant to cure people of being idle and 
liking to live on other folk's money — and it has 
done good in that way ; but workhouses are sad 
places for the poor aged people who cannot work, 
and it is a great kindness to help them to keep out 
of them. 

The best thing that was done was the setting the 



378 Young Folks History of England, 

slaves free. Look at the map of America, and you 
will see a number of islands — beautiful places, 
where sugar-canes, and coffee, and spices grow. 
Many of these belong to the English, but it is too 
hot for Englishmen to work there. So, for more 
than a hundred years, there had been a wicked 
custom that ships should go to Africa, and there 
the crews would steal negro men, women and 
children, or buy them of tribes of fierce negroes 
who had made them captive, and carry them off to 
the West Indian Islands, where they were sold to 
work for their masters, just as cattle are bought and 
sold. An English gentleman — William Wilber- 
force — worked half his life to get this horrible 
slave trade forbidden ; and at last he succeeded, in 
the year 1807, whilst George III. was still reign- 
ing. But though no more blacks were brought 
from Africa, still the people in the West Indies 
were alloAved to keep, and buy and sell the slaves 
they already had. So Wilberforce and his friends 
still worked on until the time of William IV., 
when, in 1834, all the slaves in the British domin- 
ions were set free. "" 

This reign only lasted seven years, and there 
were no wars in it ; so the only other thing that I 
have to tell you about it is, that people had gone 



William IK 379 

on from finding that steam could be made to work 
their ships to making it draw carriages. Railways 
were being made for trains of carriages and vans 
to be drawn by one steam engine. The oldest of 
all was between Manchester and Liverpool, and 
was opened in 1830, the very year that William 
IV. began to reign, and that answered so well that 
more and more began to be made, and the whole 
country to be covered with a network of railways, 
so that people and goods could be carried about 
much quicker than ever was dreamt of in old 
times ; while steam-ships were made larger and 
larger, and to go greater distances. 

Besides this, many people in England found 
there was not work or food enough for them at 
home, and went to settle in Canada, and Australia, 
and Van Dieman's Land, and New Zealand, mak- 
ing, in all these distant places, the new English 
homes called colonies; and thus there have come to 
be English people wherever the sun shines. 

William IV. died in the year 1837. He was the 
last English kinec who had the German State of 
Hanover. It cannot belong to a woman, so it 
went to his brother Ernest, instead of his niece 
Victoria. 




Victoria, 



CHAPTER XLVIIL 



VICTORIA. 



A.D. 1837— 185; 



THE Princess Victoria, daughter of the Duke 
of Kent, was but eighteen years old when 
she was waked early one morning to hear that she 
was Queen of England. 

She went with her mother, the Duchess of Kent, 
to live, sometimes at Buckingham Palace and 
sometimes at Windsor Castle, and the next year 

she was crowned in state at Westminster Abbey. 

380 



Victoria. 381 

Everyone saw then how kind she was, for when 
one of the lords, who was very old, stumbled on 
the steps as he came to pay her homage, she sprang 
r.p from her throne to help him. 

Three years later she was married to Prince 
Albert of Saxe-Coburg, a most excellent man, who 
made it his whole business to help her in all her 
duties as sovereign of this great country, without 
putting himself forward. Nothing ever has been 
more beautiful than the way those two behaved to 
one another ; she never forgetting that he was her 
husband and she only his wife, and he always 
remembering that she was really the queen, and 
that he had no power at all. He had a clear head 
and good judgment that everyone trusted to, and 
yet he always kept himself in the background, that 
the queen might have all the credit of whatever 
was done. 

He took much pains to get all that was good and 
beautiful encouraged, and to turn people's minds to 
doing things not only in the quickest and cheapest, 
but in the best and most beautiful way possible. 
One of these plans that he carried out was to set 
up what he called an International Exhibition, 
namely — a great building, to which every country 
was invited to send specimens of all its arts and 



382 Young Folks" History of England 

manufactures. It was called the World's Fair. 
The house was of glass, and was a beautiful thing 
in itself. It was opened on the 1st of May, 1851 ; 
and, though there have been many great Interna- 
tional Exhibitions since, not one has come up to the 
first. 

People talked as if the World's Fair was to 
make all nations friends; but it is not showing off 
their laces and their silks, their ironwork and brass, 
their pictures and statues, that can keep them at 
peace ; and, only two years after the Great Exhibi- 
tion, a great war broke out in Europe — only a 
year after the great Duke of Wellington had died, 
full of years and honors. 

The only country in Europe that is not Christian 
is Turkey ; and the Russians have always greatly 
wished to conquer Turkey, and join it on to their 
great empire. The Turks have been getting less 
powerful for a long time past, and finding it harder 
to govern the country; and one day the Emperor 
of Russia asked the English ambassador, Sir Ham- 
ilton Seymour, if he did not think the Turkish 
power a very sick man who would soon be dead. 
Sir Hamilton Seymour knew what this meant ; and 
he knew the English did not think it right that the 
Russians should drive out the Sultan of Turkey — 






Victoria. 383 

even though he is not a Christian ; so he made the 
emperor understand that if the sick man did die, it 
would not be for want of doctors. 

Neither the English nor the French could bear 
that the Russians should get so much power as 
they would have, if they gained all the countries 
down to the Mediterranean Sea ; so, as soon as ever 
the Russians began to attack the Turks, the Eng- 
lish and French armies were sent to defend them ; 
and they found the best way of doing this was to 
go and fight the Russians in their own country, 
namely — the Crimea, the peninsula which hangs, 
as it were, down into the Black Sea. So, in the 
autumn of the year 1854, the English and French 
armies, under Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud, 
were landed in the Crimea, where they gained a 
great victory on their first landing, called the 
battle of the Alma, and then besieged the city of 
Sebastopol. It was a very long siege, and in the 
course of it the two armies suffered sadly* from 
cold and damp, and there was much illness, i but a 
brave English lady, named Florence Nightingale, 
went out with a number of nurses to take care of 
the sick and wounded, and thus she saved a great 
many lives. There were two more famous battles. 
One was when six hundred English horsemen were 



384 Young Folks' History of England. 

sent by mistake against a whole battery of Russian 
cannon, and rode on as bravely as if they were not 
seeing their comrades shot down, till scarcely half 
were left. This was called the Charge of Bala- 
klava. The other battle was when the Russians 
crept out, late in the evening of November 5, to 
attack the English camp ; and there was a dreadful 
fight by night and in the early morning, on the 
heights of Inkerman ; but at last the English won 
the battle, and gave the day a better honor than it 
had had before. Then came a terrible winter of 
watching the city and firing at the walls ; and 
when at last, on the 18th of June, 1855, it was 
assaulted, the defenders beat the attack off; and 
Lord Raglan, worn out with care and vexation, 
died a few days after. However, soon another 
attack was made, and in September half the city 
was won. The Emperor of Russia had died dur- 
ing the war, and his son made peace, on condition 
that Sebastopol should not be fortified again, and 
that the Russians should let the Turks alone, and 
keep no fleet in the Black Sea. 

In this war news flew faster than ever it had 
done before. You heard how Benjamin Franklin 
found that electricity — that strange power of 
which lightning is the visible sign — could be 






Victoria. 385 

carried along upon metal wire. It lias since been 
made out how to make the touch of a magnet at 
one end of these wires make the other end move 
so that letters can be pointed to, words spelt out 
and messages sent to any distance with really the 
speed of lightning. This is the wonderful electric 
telegraph, of which you see the wires upon the 
railway. 

25 




CHAPTER XLIX. 

VICTORIA. 
a.d. 1857— 1860. 

PEACE had been made after the Crimean war. 
and everybody hoped it was going to last, when 
very sad news came from India. You know I told 
you that English people had gone to live in India, 
and had gradually gained more and more lands 
there, so that they were making themselves rulers 
and governors over all that great country. They 
had some of the regiments of the English army to 
help them to keep up their power, and a great 
many soldiers besides — Hindoos, or natives of 
India, who had English officers, and were taught 
to fight in the English manner. These Hindoo 
soldiers were called Sepo} T s. They were not Chris- 
ians, but were some of them Mahommedans, and 
some believed in the strange religion of India, 

386 



Victoria. 387 

which teaches people to believe m a great many 
gods — some of them very savage and cruel ones, 
according to their stories, and which forbids them 
many very simple things. One of the things it for- 
bids is the killing a cow, cr touching beef, or any 
part of it. 

Now, it seem the Sepoys had grown discontented 
with the English ; and, besides that, there came 
out a new sort of cartridge — that is, little parcels 
of powder and shot with which to load fire-arms. 
The Sepoys took it into their heads that these car- 
tridges had grease in them taken from cows, and 
that it was a trick on the part of the English to 
make them brake the rules of their religion, and 
force them to become Christians. In their anger 
they made a conspiracy together ; and, in many of 
the places in India, they then suddenly turned 
upon their English officers, and shot them down on 
their parade ground, and then they went to the 
houses and killed every white woman and child 
they could meet with. Some few had very won- 
derful escapes, and were kindly protected by 
native friends ; and many showed great bravery 
and piety in their troubles. After that the Sepoys 
marched away to the city of Delhi, where an old 
man lived who had once been king, and they set 



388 Young Folks' History of England. 

him up to be king, while every Englisn person left 
in the city was murdered. 

The English regiments in India made haste to 
come into Bengal, to try to save their country- 
folk who had shut themselves up in the towns or 
strong places, and were being besieged there by 
the Sepoys. A great many were in barracks in 
Cawnpore. It was not a strong place, and only 
had a mud wall round; but there was a native 
prince called the Nana Sahib, who had always 
seemed a friend to the officers — had G^one out 
hunting with them, and invited them to his ho.use. 
They thought themselves safe near him ; but, to 
their horror, he forgot all this, and joined the 
Sepoys. The cannon were turned against them, 
and the Sepoys watched all day the barrack yard 
where they were shut in, and shot everyone who 
went for water. At last, after more pain and 
misery that we can bear to think of, they gave 
themselves up to the Nana, and, horrible to tell, he 
killed them all. The men were shot the first day, 
and the women and little children were then shut 
up in a house, where they were kept for a night. 
Then the Nana heard that the English army was 
coming, and in his fright and rage he sent in his 
men, who killed everyone of then, and threw their 



Victoria. 391 

bodies into a deep well. The English came up the 
next day, and were nearly mad with grief and 
anger. They could not hoy hands on tl)e Nana, 
but they punished all the people he had employed ; 
and they were so furious that they hardly showed 
mercy to another Sepoy after that dreadful sight. 

There were some more English holding out in 
the city of Lucknow, and they longed to go to their 
relief ; but first Delhi, where the old king was, had 
to be taken; and, as it was a very strong place, it 
was a long time before it was conquered; but at 
last the gates of the city were blown up by three 
brave men, and the whole army made their way in. 
More troops had been sent out from England to 
help their comrades, and they were able at last to 
march to Lucknow. There, week after week, the 
English soldiers, men of business, ladies, soldiers' 
wives, and little children, had bravely waited, with 
the enemy round, and shot so often coming through 
the buildings that they had chiefly to live in the 
cellars ; and the food was so scanty and bad, that 
the sickly people and the little babies mostly died ; 
and no one seemed able to get well if once he was 
wounded. Help came at last. The brave Sir 
Colin Campbell, who had been sent out from home, 
brought the army to their rescue, and they were 



392 Young Folks' History of England. 

saved. The Sepoys were beaten in every fight; 
and at last the terrible time of the mutiny was 
over, and India quiet again. 

In 1860, the queen and all the nation had a 
grievous loss in the death of the good Prince 
Consort, Albert, who died of a fever at Windsor 
Castle, and was mourned for by everyone, as if he 
had been a relation or friend. He left nine 
children, of whom the eldest, Victoria, the Princess 
Royal, was married to the Prince of Prussia. He 
had done everything to help forward improve- 
ments ; and the country only found out how wise 
and good he was after he was taken away. 

Pains began to be taken to make the great towns 
healthier. It is true that the plague has never 
come to England since the reign of Charles II., but 
those sad diseases, cholera and typhus fever, come 
where people will not attend to cleanliness. The 
first time the cholera came was in the }*ear 1833, 
under William IV. ; and that was the last time of 
all, because it w T as a new disease, and the doctors 
did not know what to do to cure it. But now they 
understand it much better — both how to treat it, 
and, what is better, how to keep it away ; and that 
is by keeping everything sweet and clean. 




CHAPTER L 



VICTORIA, 



a.i>. 1S60— 1872. 



/^\NE more chapter, which, however, does not 

^^ finish the history of good Queen Victoria, 

and these Stories of the History of England will be 

over. 

All the nation rejoiced very much when the 

queen's eldest son, Albert Edward, the Prince of 

393 



394 Young Folks' History of England. 

Wales, married Alexandra, daughter to the king of 
Denmark. Her father and mother brought her to 
England, and the prince met her on board ship in 
the mouth of the Thames; and there was a most 
beautiful and joyous procession through London. 
When they were married the next day, in St. 
George's Chapel at Windsor, the whole of England 
made merry, and there were bonfires on every hill, 
and illuminations in every town, so that the whole 
island was glowing with brightness all that Spring 
evening. 

There is a country in Abyssinia, south of Egypt. 
The people there are Christians, but they have had 
very little to do with other nations, and have 
grown very dull and half savage ; indeed they have 
many horrid and disgusting customs, and have for- 
gotten all the teaching that would have made them 
better. Of late years there had been some attempt 
to wake them up and teach them ; and they had a 
clever king named Theodore, who seemed pleased 
and willing to improve himself and his nation. He 
allowed missionaries to come and try to teach his 
people what Christianity means a little better than 
they knew before, and invited skilled workmen to 
come and teach his people. They came ; but not 
long after Theodore was affronted by the English 



Victoria. 395 



Government, and shut them all up in prison. 
Messages were sent to insist upon his releasing 
them, but he did not attend or understand ; and at 
last an army was sent to land on the coast from 
the east, under General Napier; and march to his 
capital, winch was called Magdala, and stood on a 
hill. 

General Napier managed so well that there was 
no fighting on the road. He came to the gates of 
Magdala, and threatened to fire upon it if the 
prisoners were not given up to him. He waited 
till the time was up, and then caused his troops to 
begin the attack. The Abyssmians lied away, and 
close b}' one of the gates Theodore was found 
lying dead, shot through. No one is quite sure 
whether one of his servants killed him treach- 
erously, or whether he killed himself in his rage 
and despair. England did not try to keep Abys- 
sinia though it was conquered ; but it was left to 
the royal family whom Theodore had turned out, 
and Theodore's little son, about five years old, was 
brought to England; but, as he could not bear the 
cold winters, he was sent to a school in India. 

This, which was in the year 1868, was the last 
war the English have had. There has been fight- 
ing all round and about in Europe, especially a 



396 Young Folks' History of England, 

great war between France and Prussia in 1870 ; 
but the only thing the English had to do with that, 
was the sending out doctors and nurses, with all 
the good things for sick people that could be 
thought of, to take care of all the poor wounded on 
both sides, and lessen their sufferings as much 
as possible. They all wore red crosses on their 
sleeves, and put up a red-cross flag over the houses 
where they were taking care of the sick and 
wounded, and then no one on either side fired 
upon them. 

An Act of Parliament has given the right to 
vote, at the election of a member of the House of 
Commons, to much poorer men than used to have 
it. It is to be hoped that they will learn to use 
wisely this power of helping to choose those who 
make the laws and govern the country. To give 
them a better chance of doing so, a law has been 
made that no child shall bo allowed to grow up 
without any teaching at all, but that those who arc 
too poor to pay for their own schooling shall be 
paid for by the State, and that their parents shall 
be obliged to send them. The great thing is to 
learn to know and do one's duty. If one only 
learns to be clever with one's head, without trying 






Victoria. 



397 



to be good at the same time, it is of very little use. 
But I hope you will try to mind your duty — first 
to God and then to man ; and if you do that, God 
will prosper you and bless you. 




QUESTIONS FOR EXAMINATION. 



Chapter I. — 1. What were the people called who used to 
live here ? 2. Who were the fiercer natives who came and 
made war on them ? 3. What was the General of the Romans 
called ? 4. Where did Julius Caesar land ? 5. In what year ? 
G. How often did Julius Caesar land in Britain ? 7. What 
did he make the Britons give him ? 8. How did the old 
Britons dress ? 9. What did they eat ? 10. What sort of 
houses had they ? 11. How did they fight? 



Chapter II. — 1. When did any more Romans come to 
Britain ? 2. Who was the Emperor under whom it was con- 
quered ? 3. What brave British chief resisted Claudius ? 4. 
How far north did the Romans gain Britain ? 5. What did 
they do to keep back the north-people ? G. How may you 
know what towns were built by Romans ? 7. How long did 
the Romans keep Britain ? 8. What did they teach the 
Britons? 9. What enemies had the Britons beyond sea? 10. 
What were their two names ? 11. What became of the 
Romans? 12. Who was King Arthur? 13. Who gained pos- 
session of the country ? 14. What did they call it ? 15. What 
became of the Britons? 16. What do we call their descend- 
ants ? 

398 



Questions for Examination. 399 

Chapter III. — 1. Can you tell me any of the old English 
idols ? 2. What days of the week arc called after them ? 3. 
How many kings were there at once in England ? 4. What 
cruel things did they do ? 5. Who saw some little English 
slave children? G. What did Gregory say about the little 
Angles ? 7. Whom did he send to England ? 8. Who received 
Augustine ? 9. Where was the first English Church ? 10. 
What is the chief English Bishop called ? 11. What were the 
men called who lived apart from the world ? 12. What were 
the women called ? 13. What were their houses called ? 



Chapter IV. — 1. Who were the enemies of the old English ? 
2. Where did the Northmen and Danes come from ? 3. What 
mischief did they do ? 4. Who was the first king of all Eng- 
land ? 5. Who was the greatest and best king ? G. With 
whom did Alfred fight ? 7. What good did he do his people ? 
8. How did he teach them ? 9. When did he die ? 10. What 
was the Council of the old English called ? 



Chapter V. — 1. What was the name of the king who 
reigned peaceably ? 1. What honor was done to Edgar the 
Peaceable ? o. What were the Northmen and Danes about ? 
4. What were their leaders called ? 5. What sea-king settled 
in France ? G. What was the part of France called where Rollo 
settled ? 7. What was the name of Edgar's son? 8. How did 
Ethclred the Unready try to make the Danes go away ? 9. ITow 
did he treat those that stayed in England ? 10. How was he 
punished ? 11. What sort of king was Cnut? 12. What parts 
of England were settled by the Danes ? 



Chapter YI. — 1. What great nobleman managed English 
affairs ? 2. Whom did he make king ? 3. Why was Edward 



400 Young Folks' History of England. 

called Confessor ? 4. Of whom was the Confessor most fond ? 
5. Who were the Normans ? G. To whom did Edward want to 
leave England ? 7. Whom did the English wish to have made 
king ? 8. What did Harold promise ? 9. Did he keep his 
promise ? 10 Who fought with him ? 11. Where did William 
land? 12. Where was the hattle fought between William and 
Harold ? 13. What came of the battle of Hastings ? 14. In 
what year was it fought ? 15. Tell me the four conquests of 
England. 



Chapter VII. —1. When did William I. begin to reign ? 2. 
Who rose up against him ? 3. What did he do to Northumber- 
land ? 4. What did he do in Hampshire ? 5. What is his 
hunting-ground called ? 0. What is the curfew ? 7. What is 
Doomsday-book ? 8. What were knights ? 9. How were men 
dressed when they went to battle ? 10. How many sons had 
William ? 11. What were their names ? 12. What was the 
quarrel with Robert? 1?>. What was the cause of William's 
death ? 14. Where did he die ? 15. In what year did he die ? 
16. What possessions had he besides England ? 



Chapter VIII. — 1. When did William II. begin to reign? 
2. What Avas his nickname, and what did it mean ? 3. Was he 
the eldest son ? 4. So how came he to reign ? 5. What did 
Robert have ? G. What enterprise did Robert undertake ? 7. 
What were the Crusades ? 8. What city did the Crusaders want 
to win back ? 9. Why were they called Crusaders ? 10. Who 
preached the first Crusade ? 12. What sort of king was William 
Buf us ? 13. Who was the Archbishop iu his time ? 14. Where 
was William Ruf us killed ? 15. How had the New Forest been 
made ? 16. Who was thought to have shot the arrow ? 17. In 
what year did William II. die ? 



Questions for Examination. 401 

Chapter IX. — 1. In what year did Henry I. begin to reign ? 
2. What was his nickname, and what did it mean ? 3. Whose 
son was he? 4. How did he make himself king? 5. Whom 
did he marry ? G. Whom did he make prisoner ? 7. Where 
was Robert imprisoned ? S. How long was Robert in captivity ? 
9. Who were Henry's two children ? 10. What became of Wil- 
liam ? 11. What was the name of the ship in which he was 
drowned ? 12. Whom did Henry wish to make queen ? 13. 
Whom did Maude marry ? 14. What sort of king was Henry ? 
15. What caused his death ? 1G. In what year did Henry I. die ? 



Chapter X. — 1. When did Stephen's reign begin? 2. 
Who was Stephen ? 3. What relation was he to William the 
Conqueror ? 4. Ought Stephen to have been king ? 5. Who 
ought to have reigned ? G. What harm came of Stephen's 
reign ? 7. What happened when he tried to keep order ? 8. 
Who fought for Maude ? 9. Where were the Scots beaten ? 
10. Where was Stephen made prisoner ? 11. How did Maude 
behave ? 12. How did she escape from Oxford ? 13. What 
agreement was made between Stephen and Maude's son ? 14. 
What name was given to Maude's husband ? 15. Who was 
Maude's son? 1G. When did Stephen die ? 17. What became 
of Maude ? 



Chapter XL — 1. When did Henry II. begin to reign ? 2. 
What family began with him ? 3. Why were they called Flan- 
tagenet? 4. What sort of man was Henry II. ? 5. Who was 
his wife ? G. What were Henry's possessions in France? 7. 
Who was Archbishop ? 8. What law did the King and Arch- 
bishop dispute about ? 9. Where was the Archbishop obliged 
to go ? 10. How long did Becket stay away? 11. What was 
done as soon as he came home ? 12. How did the King show 

his sorrow ? 13. What island was gained in Henry's time ? 

26 



40:2 Young Folks' History of England. 

14. Who gained part of Ireland ? 15. What were Henry's 
troubles? 10. What were the names of his sons ? 17. Which 

of liis sons died before him ? IS. But what was his greatest 
mef '? 19. When did he die ? 



Chapter XII — 1. When did Richard I. come to the throne? 
2. What was he called ? 3. On what expedition did he go ? 
4. Who went with him ? o. What Island did he conquer on 
his way '? 0. Who was the great Prince of the Saracens '? 7. 
What city was taken by the Crusaders ? S. With whom did 
Richard quarrel ? 0. Why did Philip return ? 10. What, great 
battle did Richard fight ? 11. What fresh quarrel had he with 
Leopold ? 12. Why was he obliged to come home ? 13, What 
happened to him as he came home '? 14. How was he set free '? 
15. Who had tried to rebel in his absence ? 10. What caused 
his death? 17. In what year did he die ? 



Charter XIII. — 1. When did John come to the throne ? 
2. What was his nickname ? 3. Whose son was he ? 4. Who 
was his nephew? 5. What possessions were Arthur's proper 
inheritance ? 0. Who took his pan ? 7. What became of Ar- 
thur ? S. What did John lose ? 0. What is left to England 
of Normandy ? 10. What do you mean by the Pope ? 11. 
What quarrel had John with the Pope ? 12. What is an inter- 
dict ? 10. How did John make peace ? 14. How did the legate 
treat him ? 1,1. How did John use the kingdom? 10. What 
was he made to sign? 17. Where was Magna Charta signed? 
IS. Who was invited from France ? 19. What caused John's 
death ? 20. In what year ? 



Chapter XIY. — 1. When did Henry III. begin to reign ? 
2. In what state was the kingdom ? R. Who saved it ? 4. What 



Questions for Examination. 403 

was Henry's great fault ? 5. What beautiful church was 
built in his time ? 6. Why were his people discontented with 
him ? 7. What is the great council of the nation called ? 8. 
Who led the opposition against Henry ? 0. In what battle was 
Montfort victorious ? 10. In what battle was he defeated. 11. 
What custom was established in Henry's time ? 12. What are 
the three estates Of the realm ? 13. How long did Henry III. 
reign ? 14. When did he die ? 



Chapter XV.— 1. When did Edward I. begin to reign ? 2. 
What was his nickname ? 8. How did he rule England ? 4. 
What country did he conquer ? 5. Who were the Welsh ? G. 
Whom did lie make Prince of Wales ? 7. Who is always called 
Prince of Wales ? S. What country did Edward try to gain ? 
9. What warrior defended Scotland? 10. Where was Wallace 
defeated? 11. Who made himself King of Scotland? 12. 
Where did Edward I. die ? 13. In what year ? 



Chapter XVI. — 1. When did Edward II. come to the throne? 
2. Who was his first favorite ? 3. Who was his wife ? 4. How 
did Gaveston affront the nobles ? 5. What became of him ? 
6. What battle did Edward fight with the Scots ? 7. Who was 
Edward's second favorite? S. Who rose against the King? 
9. Who was made king in his stead ? 10. What became of 
Hugh le Despenscr? 11. What became of Edward II.? 12. 
Where was he murdered ? 13. In what year ? 



Chapter XYII. — 1. When did Edward III. begin to reign ? 
2. Who was his Queen ? 3. What was the great war in Ed- 
ward's time ? 4. What was the cause of it ? 5. Why did Ed- 
ward think he had a right to be King of France ? 6. What 
Were the four great battles of the reign of Edward III. ? 



404 Young Folks' History of England. 

7. Which of these was by sea ? S. Which was with the Scots ? 

9. Which was fought by the Black Prince ? 10. Who was the 
Black Prince ? 11. What town was taken after the battle of 
Crecy. 12. What kings were prisoners to Edward III. ? 13. 
What expedition did the Black Prince make ? 14. Who were 
the sons of Edward III. ? 15. Which of theni died before him ? 

10. In what year did Edward III. die ? 



Chapter XVIII. — 1. When did Richard II. come to the 
throne ? How old was he ? 3. Who governed for him ? 4. 
Who rose up against their lords ? o. What became of Wat 
Tyler? G. Which uncle was Richard's enemy ? 7. How was 
the Duke of Gloucester removed ? 8. What great quarrel broke 
out? 9. What was the King's sentence ? 10. Who returned ? 
11. What befcl Richard II. ? 12. To whom did he give up his 
crown ? 13. Where was he sent ? 14. In what year was he 
deposed ? 



Chapter XIX. — 1 When did Henry IV. come to the crown? 
2. Whose son w r as he ? 3. What relation was he to Edward 
III. ? 4. Who was Edward IIL's second son ? 5. Who, then, 
was his nearest heir ? G. Who rose against Henry IV. ? 7. 
Where was Hotspur killed? 8. Where did the war go on ? 
9. Who were Henry's four sons ? 10. Who were the prisoners 
at Windsor? 11. What did Henry IV. tell his son on his 
deathbed ? 12. In what year did Henry IV. die ? 13. What 
is his family called ? 



• Chapter XX. — 1. When did Henry V. come to the throne ? 
2. What war did he undertake ? 3. Who had begun the war 
with France ? 4. Why did the Kings of England think they 
ought to be Kings of France ? 5. What was the state of the 



Questions for Examination. 405 

kingdom of France ? 6. What town did Henry take ? 7. What 
battle did he fight ? 8. What is the eldest son of the King of 
France called ? 0. What made the French more easily beaten ? 
10. Whom did Henry marry ? 11. What agreement was made ? 
12. Where did Henry die ? IB. In what year ? 



Chapter XXI. — 1. When did Henry VI. come to the 
throne ? 2. How old was he ? 3. Of what kingdom was he 
called king ? 4. Who governed his part of France ? 5. Who 
rose up to help the French ? 6. Why was she called the Maid of 
Orleans? 7. What became, of her? 8. Who were quarreling 
at home ? 9. Who were the Beauforts ? 10. Who was John 
of Gaunt? 11. Whom did Henry VI. marry ? 12. What be- 
came of Duke Humfrey ? 13. What city was left to England 
in France ? 14. What terrible war broke out in England ? 15. 
Why was it called the War of the Hoses ? 10. Why did the 
Duke of York think he ought to be king ? 17. From which 
son of Edward III. did his right come ? ]8. From which son 
did Henry's ? 19. In what battle was the Duke of York killed ? 
20. Who took the command of the Yorkists ? 21. What bat- 
tles were fought in the north ? 22. What became of the 
king ? 23. When did Henry VI. cease to reign ? 



Chapter XXII. — 1. When did Edward IV. become king ? 
2. What was the War of the Roses ? 3. What was Earl War- 
wick called ? 4. How did Edward affront Warwick ? 5. 
Whom did Warwick bring back ? 0. What became of Edward ? 
7. What battles did he win ? 8. What cruel murders were 
done on the House of Lancaster ? 9. Who were Edward's 
brothers ? 10. What happened to George ? 11. What inven- 
tion was brought into England? 12. How were people begin- 
ning to fight ? 13. When did Edward IV. die ? 



406 Young Folks' History of England. 

Chapter XXIIL— 1. What was the year of Edward V.'s 
reign ? 2. Who Avas his brother ? 3. Who were his uncles on 
his mother's side ? 4. Who was his uncle on his father's side ? 
5. What great quarrel was there ? G. Which got the keeping 
of the king ? 7. How did the Duke of Gloucester get rid of the 
king's friends ? 8. Where did the Queen go ? 9. How was 
she made to give up the Duke of York ? 10. Who made him- 
self king ? Where were Edward and Richard shut up ? 12. 
What is thought to have become of them ? 



Chapter XXIY. — 1.— When did Richard III. begin to 
reign ? 2. Why could he not be a great king ? 3. Who turned 
against him ? 4. What was done to Buckingham ? 5. Who 
also plotted against him ? 6. Who was the mother of Henry 
Tudor? 7. Who was the father of Margaret Beaufort? 
8. Who was the father of the Beauforts ? 9. Who was the 
father of John of Gaunt? 10. Who wrote letters to Henry 
Tudor ? 11. Where did Henry Tudor land ? 12. Where was 
the battle fought ? 13. Who was killed there ? 14. In what 
year? 15. How long had the Plantagenets reigned ? 16. Who 
was the first Plantagenet king ? 



Chapter XXV. — 1. When did Henry VII. begin to reign ? 
2. Whom did he marry ? 8. What were thus ended ? 4. What 
family began to reign ? 5. Who were the two pretenders who 
rose up ? G. Who did Lambert Simnel pretend to be ? 7. 
What became of him ? S. Who did Perkin Warbeck pretend to 
be ? 9. What became of him ? 10. Who was put to death at 
the same time ? Whose son was the Earl of Warwick ? 12. 
What were the names of Henry's sons ? 13. Who was to be 
Arthur's wife? 14. Which son died young? 15. Who were 






Questions for Examination. 407 

Henry VIL's wicked judges ? 16. What learning was coming 
in ? 17. When did Henry VII. die ? 



Chapter XXVI. — 1. When did Henry VIII. begin to 
reign? 2. What battle did he fight in France? 3. What bat- 
tle was fought with the Scots ? 4. Who was his Prime Min- 
ister ? 5. What grand meeting had Henry with the King of 
France? 6. Who was Henry's wife? 7. What objection had 
there been to his marrying her ? 8. Who Mas their only child ? 
9. What did Wolsey want to have done ? 10. Whom did the 
king want to marry ? 11. Who was asked to decide ? 12. 
Why did not the Pope make an answer ? 13. What proposal did 
Cranmer make ? 14. What became of Wolsey ? 15. What sad 
words did he say ? 



Chapter XXVII.— 1. Why did Henry VIII. quarrel with 
the Pope ? 2. What did he call himself ? 3. Whom did he 
put to death for denying his headship ? 4. What changes 
did he make in the Church ? 5. What was done with the 
monks and nuns ? G. But what was done with those who 
wanted to make changes ? 7. How many wives had Henry ? 
8. Who was the king's first wife ? 9. What became of Katha- 
rine of Aragon ? 10. Who was her child ? 11. Who was Hen- 
ry's second wife ? 12. Who was Anne Boleyn's child ? 13. 
What became of Anne Boleyn ? 14. Who was Henry's third 
wife? 15. Who was Jane Seymour's child? 10. What be- 
came of Jane Seymour ? 17. Who was Henry's fourth wife ? 
18. What became of Anne of Cleves ? 19. Who was Henry's 
fifth wife ? 20. What became of Katharine Howard ? 21. Who 
was his sixth wife ? 22. Now tell me the names of the six 
wives ? 23. In what year did Henry VIII. die ? 



108 Young Folks' History of England. 

Chapter XXVIII.— 1. When did Edward VI. come to the 
crown ? 2. How old was he ? 3. Who ruled for him ? 4. 
What was done to the Prayer-Book ? 5. What was the Refor- 
mation ? 6. What name was given to the reformers ? 7. What 
further change was made ? 8. Who was Archbishop of Can- 
terbury ? 9. Who overthrew the Duke of Somerset ? 10. To 
whom did the Duke of Northumberland want Edward to leave 
his throne ? 11. Whose grand-daughter was Jane Grey ? 12. 
Who was his right heiress ? 13. Why'did Northumberland wish- 
to hinder Mary from reigning ? 14. How old was Edward 
when he died ? 15. In what year did Edward VI. die ? 



Chapter XXIX. — 1. When did Mary I. come to the crown? 
2. Who was at first proclaimed Queen? 3. Why was Mary's 
a better right than Jane's? 4. What became of Jane? 5. 
Whom did Mary marry ? 6. What did they try to restore ? 7. 
What was done to those who would not return to the Roman 
Catholic doctrine ? 8. What four bishops were burnt ? 9 
Where did Bishop Hooper die ? 10. Where did Bishops Ridley 
and Latimer and Archbishop Cranmer die ? 11. How many 
were burnt altogether ? 12. Into what war was Mary drawn ? 
13. What city was lost ? 14. When did Mary I. die ? 



Chapter XXX. — 1. When did Elizabeth come to the crown? 
2. What did she do for the Church ? 3. Who was the first 
favorite ? 4. Who was her wise minister ? 5. Who was the 
heiress to the crown ? 6. What was Mary of Scotland's right 
to England ? 7. Of what was Mary of Scotland accused ? 8. 
Whither was she forced to flee ? 9. What was done with her ? 
10. How long was she kept in prison ? 11. What was her end ? 
12. Why was she put to death ? 13. Where was she put to death ? 



Questions for Examination. 409 

Chapter XXXI. — 1. Who was Queen Elizabeth's chief for- 
eign enemy ? 2. What subjects of his did he persecute ? 3. 
Whom did Elizabeth send to help them ? 4. What was Sir 
Philip Sidney's generosity ? 5. What great fleet was sent 
from Spain against Elizabeth ? G. What became of the Ar- 
mada ? 7. Who were Elizabeth's great sailors ? 8. What set- 
tlement was made in her time ? 9. Who was Elizabeth's sec- 
ond favorite ? 10. What was the end of Lord Essex? 11. 
What was the Queen's great grief ? 12. When did Elizabeth 
die ? 13. What family ended with her ? 



Chapter XXXII. — 1. When did James I. come to the 
crown? 2. Who was his mother? 3. From which English 
king was he descended ? 4. What kingdom had he already ? 
5. So what kingdoms were joined together ? 0. What good 
work was done in his time ? 7. What conspiracy was made 
against him ? 8. Where was the gunpowder hidden ? 9. How 
was the plot found out ? 10. Who was going to fire the 
powder? 11. Who was James's great favorite? 12. What 
became of Sir Walter Raleigh ? 13. When did James I. die ? 
14. What family had begun with him ? 



Chapter XXXIIL— 1. When did Charles I. come to the 
crown ? 2. Who had been made powerful by Magna Carta ? 
3. How did the barons grow weak ? 4. Who had the power 
then ? 5. But who had grown strong ? fi. How ought money 
for government to be raised ? 7. Who was the king's friend ? 
8. Who was Archbishop of Canterbury ? 9. What rules did he 
enforce? 10. Who were the Puritans ? 11. Where did some of 
them go? 12. How did the king try to raise money ? 13. What 
was ship money ? 14. What was the Star Chamber ? 15. 



410 Young Folks' History of England. 

What became of Buckingham ? 1G. How had Charles offended 
the Scots ? 17. Why was he obliged to call a parliament ? 



Chaptek XXXIY. — 1. Why was the parliament angry with 
Charles I. ? 2. What friends of his did they imprison ? 3. 
What noble did they behead ? 4. Plow did Charles try to 
check the Parliament ? 5. What prevented his arresting the 
five members ? 0. What war broke out? 7. What is a civil 
war? 8. What were the king's friends called? 9. What were 
the friends of the parliament called? 10. Who was the king's 
general ? 11. What general rose to power among the Round- 
heads ? 12. What were the three great battles ? 13. Who was 
put to death by the parliament ? 14. What did the Puritans 
do? 15. Whose protection did the king seek ? 16. But what 
did the Scots do with him? 17. What is this parliament 
called ? 



Chapter XXXV. — 1. Who was prisoner to the Long Parlia- 
ment ? 2. How came Charles I. to be a prisoner ? 3. What 
did the parliament ask of him ? 4. Who took him out of the 
hands of the parliament ? 5. Who had become the chief power? 
G. How did Cromwell treat the Long Parliament ? 7. What 
did he then do to the king ? 8. When was the king beheaded ? 
9. Where was he buried ? 10. Whom did the Scots invite to 
reign ? 11. Where were they beaten ? 12. Where was Charles 
hidden ? 13. Where did he go and live ? 14. What harm 
came of their living there ? 



Chapter XXXVL— 1. Who ruled in England ? 2. How 
did he put an end to the Long Parliament ? 3. What was Oli- 
ver Cromwell's parliament called ? 4. What was Oliver Crom- 



Questions for Examination. 411 

well called? 5. How long was he Protector? G. Who was 
Protector after him ? 7. What did Richard Cromwell do ? 8. 
Who was at the head of the army ? 0. What did General 
Monk decide on doing ? 10. On what day did Charles II. re- 
turn ? 11. What is the return of Charles II. called ? 12. Whom 
did he bring back ? 13. What regiment did he retain ? 14. 
What was thus begun ? 



Chapter XXX VII. — 1. When did the reign of Charles II. 
begin ? 2. Why were the Puritans displeased ? 3. Why were 
the Cavaliers displeased? 4. What name came to be given to 
the Puritans ? 5. What name was given to the Cavaliers ? 
G. What war took place in Charles II.' s lime? 7. What great 
disasters befel London ? 8. What disturbances were there in 
Scotland ? 0. Who was the next heir to the throne ? 10. What 
was the false plot ? 11. What was the true plot ? 12. Who 
was to be made king by the Rye House plot ? 13. Who were 
concerned in it ? 14. What was the sentence on Lord Russell ? 
15. When did Charles II. die ? 



Chapter XXXVIII. — 1. When did James II. come to the 
crown ? 2. To what church did he belong ? 3. Who tried 
to become king in his stead? 4. Where was Monmouth de- 
feated? 5. What was his punishment ? G. How was the revolt 
punished ? 7. Why did the people dislike James ? 8. What 
command did he give the clergy ? 9. How many bishops re- 
fused ? 10. WTiat was done to them ? 11. Why were the peo- 
ple vexed when the king's son was born ? 12. What story did 
they tell ? 13. Who came over to England ? 14. Where did 
William of Orange land ? 15. What did King James do ? 10. 
Where did he live ? 17. In what year did he flee away? IS. 



412 Young Folks' History of England. 

What is this called ? 19. Tell me the difference between the 
Reformation, the Rebellion, the Restoration, and the Revolu- 
tion ? 



Chapter XXXIX. — 1. When was William III. made king ? 
2. Who was his wife ? 3. Who was his mother ? 4. So who 
were king and queen together ? 5. Who were now the strongest 
power ? G. Who are the Commons ? 7. How often must they 
be chosen '? S. Who are the House of Lords ? 9. Who begin 
considering of a law ? 10. Who pass the law afterwards? II. 
Who consents to it afterwards ? 12. What is the Council 
called? 13. Who were the Jacobites? 14. Who were the 
Non-Jurors ? 15. Who fought for James in Scotland ? 1G. 
Where was there a sea-fight in his cause ? IT. To what place 
did he come himself ? IS. Where were the gates shut against 
him ? 19. In what battle was he defeated ? 20. What was the 
Act of Settlement ? 21. What great Mar began at the end of 
his reign ? 22. What caused his death ? 23. In what year ? 



Chapter XL. — 1. When did Queen Anne begin to reign? 
2. Whose daughter was she ? 3. Who were her favorites ? 4. 
What battles did the Duke of Marlborough gain ? 5. What 
was the cause of the war ? G. What place in Spain was gained 
by England ? 7. Who overthrew Marlborough ? S. What min- 
istry came in ? 9. What union took place in Anne's time? 
10. In what year did Anne die ? 



Chapter XLI. — 1. In what year did George I. begin to 
reign ? 2. Whose son was he ? 3. Whose daughter was the 
Electress Sophia? 4. Whose daughter was Elizabeth Stuart 
5. How came George I. to be made King of England ? 6. Who 



Questions for Examination. 413 

did the Jacobites think ought to reign ? 7. Why was not James 
Stuart allowed to reign ? 8. What did the Whigs call him ? 
9. What did the Tories call him? 10. Where was there a ris- 
ing for him ? 11. In what year ? 12. What two battles were 
fought for him ? 13. What noblemen were beheaded ? 14. 
Where did George I. generally live ? 15. In what year did he 
die? 



Chapter XLII. — 1. When did George II. come to the throne? 
2. What great Avar was going on ? 3.* What was the last battle 
where the kings of England and France were present ? 4. Who 
came to try to regain the crown of England ? 5. What is the 
war with Charles Edward called? G. Who joined him? 7. 
W T hat battle did he gain ? 8. How far south did he march ? 
0. Where was he beaten ? 10. What strange adventures had 
they ? 11. What are colonies ? 12. Where had the English 
colonies ? 13. What was the great battle in Canada? 14. Who 
was killed there ? 15. What was the Black Hole of Calcutta ? 
1G. Who were George II. 's ministers? 17. When did George 
II. die ? 



Chapter XLIIL— 1. When did George III. begin to reign ? 
2. What relative was he to George II. ? 3. Who was his 
father ? 4. What colony revolted from him ? 5. What made 
the American colonies revolt ? G. What were Franklin's in- 
ventions ? 7. What are they now called ? 8. Who was the 
great American leader ? 9. Who died when opposing their in- 
dependence ? 10. Who allied himself with the Americans? 
11. How many children had George III. ? 



Chapter XLIV. — 1. Who were the three eldest sons of 
George III. ? 2. Which of them was a grief and sorrow to 



414 Young Folks' History of England. 

him? 3. Who was his great minister? 4. What Bill did Mr. 

Pitt want to bring in? 5. Why did George III. object? 0. 
What was the effect on him '? 7. What horrible things hap- 
pened in Frar.ee ? 4. Who came to be the great Trench leader? 
i>. Whom did he defeat in battle f 10. What did he threaten to 
do in England '? 11. Who was a great commander by sea ? 12. 
What were Nelson's three great victories? 13. Where was he 
killed? 14. What had Bonaparte risen to be? 15. How did 
the English go on resisting him ? 10. What was the sadness of 
the kind's old age ? 



CiiArTEii XLV. — 1. What was the matter with George III.? 
2. Who governed the kingdom ? 0. What great war was going 
on ? 4. Where did the English fight ? 5. Who was sent first 
to Spain ? 0. Where was Sir John Moore killed ? 7. Who 
commanded afterwards ? S. Where did he drive the French ? 
0. What was the war called ? 10. What were his great victor- 
11. What was done with Xapoleon ? 12. How soon did 
he escape ? 13. Where was he defeated ? 14. To whom did 
he give himself up? 15. Where was he kept? 10. In what 
year did George III. begin to reign ? 17. In what year did 
he die ? 



Ciiaptek XLVI. — 1. When did George IV. come to the 
crown ? 2. Whom had he married ? 3. How had she behaved? 
-1. Who was their daughter? 5. What did George IV. try to 
do ? What parts of his dominions did he visit ? 7. What Bill 
was passed in his time ? S. What discoveries were made ? 0. 
What towns grew large and rich ? 10. Who were George IV.'s 
ministers ? II. When did George IV. die ? 



Chapter XLVIL— 1. When did William IV. come to the 
throne ? 2. Whose son was he ? 3. Which party were his 



Questions for Examination. 415 

friends ? 4. What Bill was passed in his time ? 5. What riots 
took place ? 6. What change did the Reform Bill make ? 7. 
What cruel thing used to be done in the West India Islands ? 
S. Who tried to put an end to slavery ? 9. When was the slave 
trade forbidden ? 10. When were the slaves set free? 11. When 
did William IV. die ? 



Chapter XLVIII. — I. When did Queen Victoria begin to 
reign ? 2. Whose daughter is she ? 3. Whose grand-daughter? 
4. Who was her husband ? 5. What was the first great war in 
her time ? 6. Where was it fought out ? 7. Who commanded 
the English ? 8. What town was besieged ? 9. What were 
the three crreat battles of the Crimean war ? 



Chapter XLIX. — 1. What terrible disaster happened in 
India? 2. W bo were the Sepoys ? 3. What made the Sepoys 
angry? 4. What was their mutiny ? 5. Where did they make 
the most horrible murders ? G. What city held out against the 
Sepoys ? 7. What city was besieged by the English ? 8. Who 
put down the mutiny ? 9. In what year did the Prince Con- 
sort die ? 



Chapter* L. — I. Who is the Princess of Wales ? 2. In 
what African country was there a war ? 3. What was the name 
of the king ? 4. What was the name of his capital ? 5. Who 
was the English general ? 0. What became of Theodore ? 7. 
What great war was there in 1ST0 ? 8. What had the English 
to do with that ? 



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